Perceptions of Sindhi Muslims Towards Exogamous Marriages: An Exploratory Study

It has been said that exogamous marriages tend to lead to language shift (Igboanus & Wolf, 2009 & Dumanig, David & Shanmuganathan, 2013). In an early study Gal (1978) found that Hungarian women marrying German men in the city of Oberwat had shifted to German to negate their peasant Hungarian ancestry and to move up the socio-economic ladder. Similarly, David and Dealwis (2011) found in their study of Malaysian Sindhi Hindus that exogamous marriages tend to lead to language shift but is not the only reason for the shift away from the heritage language. Therefore, before mixed marriages take place one should study perceptions of the speech community towards such marriages. In this exploratory study, the perceptions of Sindhi Muslims-men and women and from different socio-economic groups towards exogamous marriages are studied. With this objective, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Sindhi Muslim participants (four male adults and six female adults) who live in Karachi. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded and themes were generated after formal consent was obtained. The findings show that language choice in the home domain is shifting because of intercultural marriages. Also, such marriages are frequent among Sindhi community members with a high socio-economic status who live in cities. Gender plays an equal role too, as the women respondents showed mixed responses towards exogamous marriages while the male respondents had a more positive perception. Such views and perceptions may affect choice of marital partners and language choice in the home domain.

Increasing Rice Productivity Through System of Rice Intensification Sri at District Swat

System of rice intensification (SRI) has been recently developed in which during the vegetative growth period, soil is kept in moist condition after transplanting young seedling singly in square pattern with spacing 25 × 25 cm2. SRI is gaining recognition by farmers of many rice growing regions of the world for raising their rice productivity under limited water supply. However information on (SRI) is limited in Pakistan. Therefore, an on- farm study was conducted during 2010 and 2011 with an objective to access the performance of different chemical fertilizers on three local rice varieties under SRI and conventional management practices at Agricultural Research Institute (North) Mingora (Swat). The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with split plot arrangement and three replications. The two cultural practices, i.e., (1) SRI: transplanting 15 days old single seedling in a square arrangement with 25 × 25 cm2 spacing, and during the vegetative growth period, keeping the soil in moist condition, and (2) Traditional management practices, and having three rice cultivars and the names were (1) Dilrosh-97, (2) JP-5, and (3) Fakhre Malakand were assigned to main plots, whereas the fertilizer treatments were assigned to sub-plots (4m × 5m). Treatments of fertilizer were comprised, T1 = Control, T2 = 100-0-0-0 kg N-P2O5-K2O-Zn ha-1, T3 = 100-60-0-0 kg N-P2O5-K2O-Zn ha-1, T4 = 100-60-40-0 kg N-P2O5-K2O-Zn ha-1, and T5 = 100-60-40-20 kg N-P2O5-K2O-Zn ha-1. Before transplanting the phosphorous and potassium and half of the nitrogen fertilizers were incorporated into the soil. 7-10 days after transplanting zinc was applied,and the remaining half of N and P was applied in two equal splits at 25-30 days and 45-55 days after transplanting.The results showed statistically significant increase in panicles plant-1 number,tillers plant-1 number, height of plant, length of panicle, number of grains panicle-1, biological yield, paddy yield,thousand-grain weight,harvest index and dry weight of plant enhanced by 9.4%, 8.9%, 10.3%, 9.9%, 9.6%, 6.9%, 4.4%, 1.3%, 9.3% and 15.6% respectively under SRI as compared to the conventional cultivation practices. Among rice varieties Fakhre- Malakand outperformed the other rice varieties under the SRI practices. Similarly, compared to control, T5 improved panicles plant-1 number,height of plant, tillers plant-1 number , length of panicle, number of grains panicle-1, hilum yield, paddy yield, harvest index, thousand-grain weight and dry weight of plant of rice by 38.6%, 37.9%, 34.4%, 37.7%, 40.1%, 12.4%, 39.0%, 21.9%, 39.5%, and 66.1% respectively. It may be concluded from the study that system of rice intensification is a better method for rice cultivation as water accessibility is the major problem in rice production at district Swat. Furthermore, rice variety, Fakhre Malakand proved to be a suitable variety under SRI management practice and may be used to obtain higher rice production, where availability of irrigation water is limited.