THE state conference of the TNUEF (Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front) was held at Thanjavur from August 15-17.  The need to strengthen this organisation and the many struggles and agitations that it organises was borne out by the fact that in just the month preceding the conference, there had been two incidents of brutal ‘honour killings’ in which both husbands and wives had been murdered because of their inter-caste marriages;  one elderly dalit had been murdered in the neighbouring district of Rameswaram;  and, on the very eve of the conference, an attack on dalits had taken pla

CONSIDER the severe all round attacks on women’s rights in the last two and a half months of which are recounted here: the gruesome rape and attack on a 17 year old girl in Unnao and the BJP government’s negligence and political defence of the accused bylawmakers of the ruling party; the passing of the Triple Talaq Bill which will render many Muslim women destitute; the passing of the Wage Code Bill in Parliament which dilutes the Equal Remuneration Act; the passing of the bill, which provides for death penalty under the POCSO Act; the reduction in the budget for women’s security, the histo

THE official organ of the RSS, Organiser (August 4, 2019, Vol 71, No 6), has come out with a cover story, ‘Exploring RSS’. It was in support of the Nagpur University’s decision to introduce a BA course ‘RSS and Nation Building’ in its history syllabus. The cover story extols the role of RSS in ‘nation building’ and argues that, since it is the ‘biggest voluntary organisation’ in the world, it is necessary for everyone to study and learn from its history. A student should be free to study any aspect of history and that may include RSS.

DURING President Obama’s tenure, his administration created an Agency with its major goal as the creation of educational software ‘as compelling as the best video game’. This might have been inspired by a statement made by Professor Edward O. Wilson, of Harvard, who declared that “Games are the future of learning”. Military, corporates and businesses have already started using games as a means of ‘learning’ and ‘influencing’. It is time for us to explore how games can be used to subvert capitalism.

VIRTUAL games or all games that are played on computers, consoles, tablets, mobiles and such other devices, are a direct product of the main technology that is at present used in production process. Their origin can be traced to the military driven research and their interconnectedness. Post Second World War global developments, nuclear arms race and the US’ drive to out-pace the Soviet Union played an important role in the technological developments and innovations of this period.