IJSPL is a double-blind peer reviewed online journal published by the Rashtram School of Public Leadership, Rishihood University.
A Note from the IJSPL Editorial Team on the Publication of Volume II, Issue 2
The second issue of the second volume of the International Journal of Studies in Public Leadership (ISSN 2583-3308) is out now, offering the latest in research from the field of leadership studies as well as a wider sphere of humanities and social sciences disciplines. IJSPL, a refereed biannual online journal published by the Rashtram School of Public Leadership, Rishihood University, is multidisciplinary in its range and character, by virtue of the multidisciplinary nature of leadership studies itself. The current issue of IJSPL (Vol II, Issue 2) features research articles and book reviews covering a wide range of topics as well as theoretical and methodological approaches to research, pedagogy, and practices, critically examining various aspects and instances of leadership, systems, and institutions across multiple domains.
The current issue contains five research articles and one book review which bring focus on the intersections of, variously, systems and services, institutions and ideas, society and academia, and, above all, traditional frameworks of thinking on one hand and contemporary socioeconomic exigencies on the other. Some of these research articles, such as the one authored by Suyash Sherekar, bring out in the current academic parlance the civilisational ethos of ‘services’, a term that has acquired some highly specific connotations in modern times. A few other papers highlight the sharp contrasts between the processes of enquiry, actions, and specialisations evolved out of Western scholarship and the Indic counterparts of those processes. The paper by K. Sankaran is a good case in point – it not only draws our attention to the sources of the contrast and the problems posited by the same, but also offers a possible solution.
The current issue also brings to the fore the age-old debate between the western concepts of Nation and State and the Indic ideas of Rāṣṭra and Rājya, in a new articulative style hitherto unknown in academic research. The article authored by veteran Yoga-practitioner Sri Vishwanath R. Iyer has touched upon these issues in a detailed manner by making a detour of our ancient texts to make a case for the Bhāratiya Civilisational framework of interacting with institutions and ideas. Another article by K.R. Pillai et al. has engaged in a comparative study of eastern and western frameworks of knowledge to highlight the points of intersection of the two. They have used Porter’s strategic framework, a very popular concept in management, to distil certain ideas from it that form an inseparable part of Indic wisdom. The attempts at such cross-cultural and even cross-civilisational studies are important to demonstrate the interconnectedness and interdependence of our shared futures.
This issue of IJSPL also contains a review of what we felt to be an extremely interesting book, titled Bargaining with a Rising India: Lessons from the Mahabharata by Amrita and Aruna Narlikar, which focuses on understanding India’s negotiation culture through insights from the Mahabharata. In a rapidly evolving world such as ours, the deeper we delve into the art of negotiation of different cultures while fully comprehending the depth of our own, the more prepared we become in facing the unforeseen challenges of the future. The review by Priyank Kumar Chauhan performs the necessary task of highlighting one such important attempt arising from scholars in the disciplines of international relations and area studies.
The Call for Papers for the upcoming issue of IJSPL (Vol III, Issue 1) will be released soon. We encourage submissions from multiple fields in the humanities and social sciences as well as from the broader interdisciplinary areas concerned with governance, civilisational knowledge, wellness, and the arts, which may potentially contribute to the learning of leadership skills and leadership building in the political, social, and academic spheres through the development of meta-skills.