Volume 1, Issue 5
Convergence Without Comparability: Challenges of Implementing IFRS in Emerging Markets
The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have become the de facto global language of corporate financial reporting, with the IFRS Foundation reporting complete jurisdictional profiles for 169 jurisdictions as of 2025, the majority of which mandate the Standards for domestic publicly accountable entities. Yet the transplantation of IFRS into emerging markets has produced outcomes markedly different from those observed in the developed-market contexts in which the Standards were substantially developed. This paper argues that IFRS implementation in emerging economies is best understood not as a binary adoption event but as a continuum of convergence strategies—ranging from full adoption (South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil) to selective convergence (India's Ind AS, China's Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises)—shaped by institutional capacity, enforcement infrastructure, and the fair-value orientation of the Standards themselves. Using World Bank Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC), IFRS Foundation jurisdictional data, and the comparative accounting literature, the paper identifies four recurring implementation challenges: inadequate valuation and audit infrastructure for fair-value measurement, weak enforcement and monitoring mechanisms, the high cost of professional retraining, and tension between IFRS's principles-based approach and the rules-based regulatory traditions common in many emerging economies. A research gap is identified: much of the adoption literature measures formal (de jure) adoption without adequately assessing de facto compliance quality, leaving the practical implementation gap in emerging markets under-theorized. The paper's critical evaluation weighs harmonization benefits against these implementation costs and concludes that convergence, rather than full adoption, may represent a more institutionally realistic pathway for many emerging economies, provided it is paired with sustained investment in audit oversight and valuation capacity.
All Articles in This Issue
Artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed the manner in which music is created, distributed, and consumed. Modern generative AI systems are capable of producing melodies, lyrics, instrumentals, vocal performances, and complete musical compositions within seconds through nothing more than a simple text prompt provided by the user. While these technological developments open new frontiers for creativity and commercial innovation, they simultaneously challenge the doctrinal foundations of copyright law, which has historically been constructed upon the assumption that creative expression originates from human intellect, judgment, and labour. The emergence of AI-generated music raises a cluster of difficult and unresolved legal questions concerning authorship, ownership, originality, infringement, and liability. When a musical composition is produced primarily by an algorithm, it becomes genuinely uncertain whether copyright protection ought to be granted and, if so, to whom such protection properly belongs. Parallel concerns arise in relation to the use of copyrighted songs and sound recordings for training artificial intelligence models without the knowledge or consent of the artists, producers, composers, and rights holders whose creative works form the very backbone of these systems. This paper examines the relationship between artificial intelligence and copyright law within the Indian legal framework. It analyses the statutory requirement of human authorship under the Copyright Act, 1957, evaluates the applicability of the originality standard as developed by Indian courts, and explores emerging disputes relating to voice cloning, data scraping, and personality rights. The study further examines recent judicial developments and proposes legislative and policy reforms that may enable India to encourage technological innovation while simultaneously protecting the economic and moral interests of human creators.
The proliferation of social media platforms has fundamentally restructured how young people communicate, construct identity, and engage with the world around them. Applications such as Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and short-video platforms have become central to the daily lives of hundreds of millions of young individuals across the globe. While these environments offer unprecedented opportunities for creativity, community building, and social inclusion, a growing body of empirical evidence links excessive and psychologically harmful patterns of use to adverse mental health outcomes among youth populations, including anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, cyberbullying, body image distortion, and digital addiction. This paper examines the relationship between social media usage and youth mental health through a doctrinal and analytical framework, drawing upon international and national studies, government reports including India's Economic Survey 2026, data from the World Health Organization, and the World Happiness Report 2026. The analysis addresses key psychological mechanisms — among them social comparison processes, dopaminergic feedback loops, fear of missing out (FoMO), and the displacement of in-person interaction — that mediate the relationship between platform use and psychological well-being. The paper further acknowledges the dual nature of digital connectivity, recognising that online communities support marginalised youth and expand access to mental health services. It concludes that mental health impact is determined not by exposure alone but by the quality and intentionality of engagement, and recommends a multi-stakeholder response encompassing digital literacy education, responsible platform design, institutional counselling infrastructure, and family-based guidance.
The modern research university increasingly relies on a stratum of workers—adjunct instructors, postdoctoral researchers, and grant-funded contract scientists—who perform essential intellectual labor without the employment security historically associated with academic careers. This paper argues that such precarity is not an incidental byproduct of budget constraints but a structural feature of the contemporary research enterprise, produced by the interaction of soft-money grant funding, an oversupplied doctoral labor market, and a legal framework that has struggled to classify knowledge workers consistently as "employees." Drawing on National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) jurisprudence, National Science Foundation (NSF) labor-force data, and comparative statutory regimes in Germany and the United Kingdom, the paper examines how legal indeterminacy about employment status enables institutions to externalize risk onto individual researchers. It identifies a research gap in existing scholarship: sociological accounts of "adjunctification" and the "gig academy" have not been adequately integrated with labor-law analysis of how classification doctrine itself facilitates precarity. The paper's critical evaluation weighs efficiency-based justifications for flexible academic staffing against equity and scientific-integrity costs, concluding that unionization gains since 2016 represent partial but insufficient remedies. Recommendations include statutory minimum-term protections modeled on Germany's Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, grant-portability reforms allowing funding to follow researchers rather than institutions, and clarified federal guidance affirming postdoctoral employee status. The paper concludes that meaningful reform requires treating research labor precarity as a labor-law problem, not merely an institutional budgeting or career-development issue.
The COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the most significant disruptions to human social life since the Second World War. While the immediate concern of governments and public health institutions was the containment of viral transmission, the social consequences of prolonged lockdowns, physical distancing measures, quarantine protocols, travel restrictions, and the widespread closure of educational institutions and workplaces have proven to be equally profound and enduring. Human beings, as inherently social organisms, rely upon physical presence, routine interaction, shared spaces, and collective experiences for emotional regulation, trust formation, identity construction, and community cohesion. The pandemic temporarily transformed these fundamental social behaviours into potential health risks, requiring societies across the globe to rapidly reconstruct the manner in which individuals communicate, work, learn, and maintain relationships. This paper examines the direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 on social behaviour through a doctrinal and analytical framework, drawing upon sociological theory, behavioural psychology, public health literature, and post-pandemic social research. The analysis explores the erosion of social capital and weak social ties, the rise of digital dependency and communication fatigue, the emergence of behavioural polarisation, the transformation of workplace and educational interactions, and the persistence of post-pandemic social avoidance behaviours. Particular attention is devoted to demographic differences in adaptation among children, adolescents, young adults, working professionals, and older populations. The paper further argues that although digital technologies prevented complete social fragmentation during periods of physical isolation, virtual interaction proved incapable of fully replicating the spontaneity, emotional depth, and trust-building functions of face-to-face human engagement. The long-term legacy of COVID-19 therefore extends beyond public health and economics, influencing the structure of social relationships, patterns of community participation, and the future of human interaction itself. The study concludes that post-pandemic societies must seek to balance the efficiencies of digital connectivity with the irreplaceable psychological and social benefits of physical presence and shared experiences.