Azhagu's Analects

Religion as a belief system is a crucial part of India's culture. World Values Survey (2010-14) studied religiosity in various countries of the world and reported that religion is ‘very important’ or ‘rather important’ for more than 90% of Indian respondents. In particular, 80% of its population follow Hinduism. Auguste Comte sees religion as a crucial player in stabilizing society. However, in his work, “law of the three stages of the human mind,” he explains how the human mind evolves from interpreting the world through a religious perspective into understanding every phenomenon through a positivist approach. According to Comte, the chances of the human mind rejecting religious ideas increase when it transforms into the positivist stage. But, spiritual organisations, religious organisations in a new veil, have challenged Comte's theory by employing a positivist approach to validate religious ideas. As Hinduism was propagated as a way of life more than as a religion, its

Anganwadi workers (AWWs) are not just frontline health workers. Their job description in the official website of the department of Women and Child Development in Tamilnadu runs up to 21 bulletins. Some of the important functions include eliciting community support and participation in running various programmes, organising non-formal pre-school activities in the anganwadi for children in the age group of 3-6, organising supplementary nutrition feeding for children (0-6 years), expectant and nursing mothers by planning the menu based on locally available food and local recipes, and providing health counseling to mothers and adolescents.  In addition to their contractual obligations, by leveraging AWW's rapport with the general public, they are expected to carry out various other functions by the government such as collecting census and caste data, aiding in the delivery of various welfare benefits, and distributing voter slips. Not surprisingly, they are also playing an instru

Payal, in her book, "The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West" has dismantled some of the commonly held misconceptions about the use of technology by economically marginalized sections of the population. She could be lauded as the counterpart of CK Prahalad, a management thinker and the author of the book "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid," in the ICTD space. Work of Prahalad revolutionized the fast-moving consumer goods industry by introducing a new lens through which the poor were perceived not as the receivers of philanthropic aid but as active buyers of consumer products. Similarly, Payal's work opens up an unexplored next billion users’ world to tech-giants.  Her work is an essential read for all the Californian ideologists suffering from savior complex, policymakers, and researchers exploring ICTD space. From her decades of experience, she portrays how the poor in the global south consume the internet to meet their wants and fulf