Vivekananda Journal of Research

Editorial

Sachin Gupta — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

We are living in a time of rapid change. Technology is changing the way we work and communicate, financial institutions are becoming more aware of environmental issues, and businesses are using artificial intelligence to improve their operations. At the same time, issues such as women’s representation, financial inclusion, employment skills, and environmental responsibility continue to be important for society. Green finance is connected with sustainable development. Education is connected with the green workforce. Digital media is connected with economics, branding, culture, and representation. Financial inclusion is connected with community development.

Representation of Women in 'The Trial'

Vaishnavi, Rosy Singh — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

This paper investigates the marginal yet recurring presence of women in Kafka’s ‘The Trial.’ The women in the novel are not represented as autonomous individuals but mirror of Josef K.’s confidence, confusion, guilt and resignation. His dismissive and patronizing attitude with Frau Grubach is reflective of his sense of superiority, confused intimacy with Fraulein Burstner is reflective of sense of control, inability to help the washerwoman reflects his own powerlessness and finally his surrender to Leni parallels his surrender to the court. It also explores the Lacan’s concept of fragmented self, desire and gaze, Freud’s concept of repression, guilt and unconscious desire in the context of the novel. Existential Psychology of alienation and anxiety is presented through the protagonist’s encounters with the women in the novel. Kafka has carved women into psychological landscape to map the erosion of Josef K.’s autonomy.

Empowering the Future: Green Skills and Education for a Sustainable Workforce

Ekta Garg — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

High-quality workers with specialized skills are needed for the transition to a green economy to pursue sustainable development across sectors. The chapter elaborates on the importance of green skills and education interventions in preparing people for the changing world of sustainability. Green skills cover anything from renewable energies, sustainable farming, waste management, and circular economy approaches that aim at addressing global issues such as climate change and resource scarcity. A study gap exists in skills, though, especially in rapidly evolving economies where workers in traditional industries such as fossil fuels need to be reskilled. It emphasizes new pedagogy-based approaches to filling this gap in terms of including sustainability in school curricula; further developing vocational training programs centered on green technologies; and establishing industry-education partnerships for on-the-job training. Germany's dual system of vocational education and training for renewable energy technicians, coupled with online platforms that offer sustainability courses, provides excellent models that can be expanded worldwide. The chapter also delves into how digital technologies should be used as instruments to democratize green education, thereby ensuring equity for marginalized groups and promoting lifelong learning. To conclude, the chapter posits policy recommendations on how governments may mainstream green skills into national education systems, focusing on collaboration between the public and private sectors in creating a resilient and future-proof workforce. Through education as a key pillar of the green economy, societies can provide for an equitable and sustainable transformation in line with global sustainability goals.

The Potential of Digital Regional Podcast Use of Immersive Audio Storytelling for Gen Z Engagement on YouTube

Arnab Basu, Sharmila Kayal, Swati Agarwal — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

The radio industry gained widespread popularity and is regarded as an influential tool for entertainment, information dissemination and education. Radio has a rich legacy in India where it has also contributed to the growth and development of the society and it had a prominent role in the modernization, making a contribution to many developmental campaigns. Radio has provided support by reaching to the audiences far and wide by supplying information on a range of issues like health, education, agriculture, and has truly been a catalyst in heralding modern society. With the growth of the digital communication systems, radio has found subsistence through the podcast. These days podcasts are popular with the audiences and the interest seems to grow more and more. The objective of the paper is to analyze the content for the podcast in Bengali language and analyze the reasons for its popularity among the audiences. The study adopts qualitative methodology and focused group discussions are conducted. The data thus obtained inform that the regional language (Bengali) podcasts combine convergence and traditional storytelling methods to interest the audience and nostalgia and Bengali literature adaptations invite regular listeners. The podcasts also serve as a platform to keep linguistic and cultural identity thriving in the Bengali-speaking diaspora.

FraudShield AI: A Real-Time Financial Fraud Detection System Using Machine Learning and Scalable Web Architecture

Sushma Malik, Anamika Rana, Divyansh Malik, Mohit Mahara — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

Financial fraud has become a critical challenge in modern digital payment ecosystems due to the exponential growth of online transactions and increasingly sophisticated attack patterns. Traditional rule-based detection systems lack adaptability and fail to detect complex, evolving fraudulent behaviors. This study presents FraudShield AI, a machine learning-driven framework for real-time financial fraud detection that integrates predictive modeling with a scalable system architecture. The proposed approach employs a Random Forest classifier trained on the PaySim dataset, combined with domain-specific feature engineering based on variations in transactional balances, to enhance anomaly-detection capability.

The system is deployed using a full-stack architecture comprising FastAPI, Node.js, React, and MongoDB, enabling real-time prediction, secure data handling, and interactive visualization. Experimental evaluation on a highly imbalanced dataset demonstrates strong performance, achieving high precision (0.9132), recall (0.9032), F1-score (0.9082), and an ROC-AUC of 0.9957, indicating excellent discriminative capability.

The findings highlight the effectiveness of ensemble learning and behavioral feature engineering in detecting rare fraudulent events. This work presents a practical, scalable fraud detection framework that bridges the gap between theoretical machine learning models and real-world financial deployment. Future work will focus on adaptive learning, real-time data streaming, and advanced deep learning models to further enhance system robustness and scalability.

The The Rise of Green Finance in India: How Public and Private Banks are Leading the Way

Megha Aggarwal, Priyanka Gupta, Khanak Goswami — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

This study investigates how Indian Banks have incorporated Environmental, Social
and Governance (ESG) criteria into their business models. It provides overview of
the different options that banks in India are pursuing in relation to ESG criteria
and provides insight into what position banks are taking with respect to adopting
ESG Framework. This research investigates and compares how both public and
private banks are performing against ESG metric and their comparative ability to
implement green finance initiatives. The methodology used in this research is based
on a comparative analysis of green finance and Sustainability Initiatives, a review of
ESG Reports, Sustainability Reports and the associated ESG information available
on Indian banks’ websites - the quantitative data from this research will be available
for examining the challenges and opportunities of integrating green finance
within Indian Banking. The research identifies both challenges and opportunities
of integrating green finance and gives insight into how Indian banks view green
finance as a key strategic priority. The support received from the RBI and SEBI
through regulations has expedited the process of adopting ESG practices. However,
due to a lack of knowledge about such products, people have not participated in
enough numbers. Therefore, the inclusion of ESG must be done proactively to obtain
a competitive advantage to meet India’s Net Zero 2070 aspirations. Consequently,
this research provides insights for banks, regulators and policymakers to enhance
the green finance strategies, increase ESG integration and use technology to create
transparency and increase efficiency in the financial system.

Artificial Intelligence: A Path to Ecocidal Consequences

Shivam Pandey, Ankita Shaw — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

The current technological paradigm of the twenty-first century is often defined as Artificial Intelligence (AI). This field is described as a panacea of economic development, social innovation and sustainable development, with discourse often focusing on efficiency and transformative capacity. Nonetheless, the prevailing narrative of the equivalence of technological sophistication and sustainability tends to mask the material, ecological and labour-intensive basis needed to sustain AI systems, and hides a growing ecological footprint. The growth of AI relies on massive data centres that use gigawatts of electricity and substantial amounts of freshwater, intensive mineral extraction for semiconductor production, and a significant increase in electronic waste. As AI systems proliferate, they simultaneously contribute to a growing trend of damage to the global environment, which could amount to ecocide.

Governance frameworks typically focus on ethical principles such as fairness, transparency, privacy, and accountability; however, these concerns often tend to overshadow the more significant political and ecological consequences of the rapid growth of AI. Despite the rapid expansion and permeability of Artificial Intelligence, its potential to cause ecocide remains unexplored. This article examines how the escalating sophistication of tools in the form of Artificial Intelligence has the potential to produce environmental harms that meet the threshold of ecocide. The intention of the authors, instead of providing definitive proof, is to be accountable for, and delineating the responsibility ought to be taken into consideration by the designers of such algorithmic technologies.

Impact of Liquidity on Technical Efficiency of Automobile Firms in India

Priyanka Gurawalia, Neha Kumar — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

Liquidity and efficiency run concurrently and are critical from the standpoint of any firm. Liquidity ensures smooth running in the short term and efficiency help for the future growth of the firm. This research examines liquidity and technical efficiency of selected automobile firms in India. This study's objectives are to ascertain the company's liquidity and technical efficiency as well as to investigate the relationship between the two during a ten-year period, from 2015 to 2024. The top four companies of Indian automobile Industry namely, Maruti Suzuki, Tata motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hyundai Motor India have been selected based on market share and sales volume. The statistical approaches used for the liquidity and technical analysis including arithmetic mean, standard deviation, variance, and panel data regression. Efficiency as a representation of technical efficiency (output oriented) is determined using the data envelope analysis approach. DEA measure technical efficiency of selected automobile firms as per CRS and VRS approaches. According to the study, technical efficiency and liquidity do not significantly correlate. This study helps to understand the relationship between liquidity and technical efficiency of the selected enterprises in Indian automobile industry, helping them to make significant financial decisions.

Regional Progress of Self-Help Groups Linkage Programs of Financial Inclusion in India

Bhushan Kumar Chawla, Parmod Kumar Aggarwal, Preeti — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

Self-help group (SHG) bank linkage programme plays a vital role in promoting financial inclusion in India. This paper is an attempt to examine the regional progress of SHGs linkage programs in India and represents the overall progress with respect to saving account, loan disbursement and loan outstanding under financial inclusion. The study is based on secondary data collected from the reports and websites of NABARD and RBI for the period of post pandemic 2021-22 to 2023-24. To achieve the objectives of the study trend analysis, growth analysis and regional comparative analysis have been used. The findings of the study represent that the SHGs savings, loan disbursement and the total loan outstanding with banks over the post pandemic period is increased. Additionally, the percentage of women’s of SHGs rose gradually with all respect. A comparison by region shows that SHG progress with savings, credit and loan outstanding linkage has increased in every region, with the southern region seeing the fastest growth. However, there is little growth in the northern-eastern region, which might be because the program was saturated. The study concludes that the SHG-bank linkage programme continues to serve as an effective instrument for financial inclusion, women empowerment and rural development in India.

Conceptual Analysis of the Media Business Through Microeconomic Perspectives

Sayak Pal, Nitesh Tripathi, Swati Agarwal, Sharmila Kayal — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

One of the most important lessons economics can provide is the understanding of the art of balancing expenditure and savings. Consumers often struggle to control their spending when it comes to the consumption of media content. Resources are not abundant. Therefore, no amount of production can justify the wants of the people. While a large section of the mass media (Ex, television, Social Media, etc.) is free to consume, the question remains, if not money, what else are we paying? Therefore, understanding media consumption requires a deeper understanding of microeconomic factors, especially for marketers and advertisers.

The study applies the interdisciplinary approach to connect two social science disciplines, economics, with media and communication, to apply the theoretical concepts of microeconomics in the media and communication. Conceptual analysis was used to explain the economic concepts of consumer demand, utility, indifference curve, goods substitution, and consumer equilibrium to understand the content consumption from the media and communication perspective. It is to apply the mentioned concepts in the media and communication industry with the help of graphical, mathematical, and statistical applications through pertinent examples that help in understanding and predicting consumers' utility and preference over a particular product, or a good or service bundle. The understanding will help marketers not only to understand the consumption pattern but also to design their promotional campaign with clarity and efficiency.

Vendor Invoice Intelligence System using Machine Learning for Cost Prediction and Risk Detection

Shivam, Mayank, Nikita Malik — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

The tracking of vendor invoices in large organizations requires the handling of thousands of invoices across multiple vendors, purchase orders, and deliveries. Manual record keeping not only is tedious but also can lead to errors, making it difficult for the finance team to detect any anomalies that pose a threat. The design, implementation, and deployment of this project includes developing a Vendor Invoice Intelligence System powered by machine learning techniques for automatically predicting invoices' freight costs and detecting potentially risky invoices. In order to accomplish that, the authors implement this system by using the programming language Python along with a relational SQLite database made up of five interrelated tables with more than one million records in total. Next, exploratory data analysis is performed, features are extracted from the raw data such as the freight per unit, delay in delivery, and mismatch between invoices at the dollar level, and regression and classification models are trained on that dataset. As for the model that yields the highest accuracy for the task of predicting invoices' freight costs, after comparing three algorithms, Linear Regression emerges as the winner with an R² score of 96.99 percent, Mean Absolute Error of 24.11, and Root Mean Squared Error of 124.72. In terms of invoice risk detection, after comparing three different classification algorithms, Random Forest is the model that performs the best with an accuracy of 88 percent and a weighted F1 score of 0.87. Finally, both tasks are deployed on an interactive Streamlit web application in which invoices' information can be inputted and analyzed in real-time regardless of the user's technical background.

Visual Storytelling and Brand Perception: An Analysis of Red Bull’s Social Media Strategy

Kanishtha Agarwal, Sidharth Verma, Durgesh Tripathi — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0530

The study is about how Red Bull builds its brand identity and positioning through visual storytelling on platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. It also explores the elements such as dynamic camera techniques, fast-paced editing, and motion that contribute towards an immersive and experience-based brand narratives. A total of 18 videos from across the brand’s pages on Instagram and YouTube were selectively chosen as a part of purposive sampling and exploratory research design, which is mainly centred around the strategic content theme of extreme sports, high-risk stunts and youth-oriented adventure culture. Qualitative visual analysis was done to identify the repeating and recurring patterns in designs, multimedia elements, and audience engagement. The study further uses Gestalt theory to understand how viewers interpret complex and highly intensive visuals. It includes key principles of this theory, continuity, figure, ground closure, proximity and similarity, which enable clarity, coherence and active engagement despite high visual intensity. Engagement patterns and audience responses in comment sections indicate that wearers perceive and respond to the content as unified, shared thoughts and experiences.