A persistent development challenge in India and worldwide, educational inequality still constitutes a barrier to long-term economic prospects for populations and social hierarchies. In India, despite decades of policy initiatives to improve education access for all, minority and underserved populations have lower levels of educational attainment, drop-out rates are higher for these groups and there is limited access to quality programs (Choudhury et al., 2023). There are persistent inequalities in access to, quality of and outcomes from education (OECD, 2023; Inequality of Opportunity in Education, 2025), related to socioeconomic background, geographical location, caste identity and community marginalisation. Such differences are grounded in the country´s history of socioeconomic stratification and exacerbated by spatially-dispersed educational infrastructure, variations in teacher quality, and household resource constraints (Choudhury et al., 2023; Turner & Hanushek, 2024). Education's importance as the foundation of human development is universal; unsurprisingly, it serves not only as a driver for individual economic mobility, but also a force in shaping inclusive societies and mitigating structural inequities (Hanushek 1979; Deming 2025). Economists and education researchers have traditionally studied how higher levels of education increase people’s access to employment, incomes earned, and labour force participation (Hanushek, 1979; Deming, 2025); evidence from global comparative research also indicates the contribution of equitable education systems to financial inclusion and overall economic participation (Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2025). Yet, it is less clear the extent to which education impacts other dimensions of social inclusion – such as civic engagement, participation in community organizations or services, and equitable treatment in social institutions contexed by enduring social hierarchies and discrimination (Ben Brik & Brown, 2024).

This paper examines how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is adopted and the level of trust in 231 employees of a hospital. The research was statistically analyzed with the help of SPSS (including factor analysis and regression) that determines five main dimensions of the AI application Clinical and Operational, Health Information Management, Patient Monitoring, Administrative Support and Patient Communication. The descriptive statistics indicate that there is high unanimity on the use of AI in enhancing the hospital operations and communication with patients. The findings indicate that there is a significant positive correlation between trust and AI adoption (r = 0.402, p = 0.000) and trust contributes 16.1% to the adoption levels. Moreover, a Krushal-Wallis H test demonstrates that there is a significant difference in adoption between designations (p = 0.015), the highest adoption is exhibited by IT/Systems staff and the lowest one is demonstrated by nurses. This evidence underlines that even though AI is versatile in the hospital operations, developing trust is the key to the extensive adoption of the technologies by the professionals.

The Internet of Musical Things connects smart instruments, wearable devices, and musical tools using the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Semantic Web technologies. Previous studies have improved semantic interoperability and network efficiency but they primarily focused on technical aspects overlooking usability and cultural inclusivity. This paper reviews existing contributions to identify gaps such as complex interfaces and insufficient validation. To address these issues, we propose an intuitive, feedback-enabled, and emotion-aware graphical interface for non-technical users. The methodology emphasizes requirement analysis, user-friendly design, feedback integration through usability and adaptability, thereby bridging technical infrastructure and real-world applications.

The modern competitive and fast-changing organizational environment has seen employee engagement become an important productivity, retention, and general organizational success factor. Even though effective, to a certain extent, traditional human resource practices will fail to result in long-term motivation and active involvement of the employee. According to this, gamification has become a prevalent trend as a new form of innovation that incorporates game design into non-games to improve interaction and performance. In this paper, the concept of how gamification can be applied in human resource management and how it can be effective in creating employee engagement is discussed. It deals with the very basics of gamification such as points, badges, leaderboards, challenges, and rewards and examines how these elements affect motivation of employees, collaboration among employees, and job satisfaction among employees. It also studies the psychological mechanism of gamification, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, behavioural reinforcement and goal orientation. The study is conceptual and analytical in nature, which is supported by the secondary information in the literature, industry reports and case study of organizations that have successfully applied gamified HR practices. Findings indicate that gamification is capable of significantly enhancing the engagement of the employees in training, performance review and in activities at the workplace to make the usual routine activities less monotonous and more entertaining. It also contributes to obtaining a better learning, better team dynamics and positive organizational culture. However, the study identifies such problems as an overuse of extrinsic rewards, potential burnout of staff, and the need to design and implement it carefully. The paper concludes by stating that gamification can be an excellent tool of growing engagement and sustainable performance in the modern working environments when applied strategically in line with the organizational goals and the needs of the employees.