THE Reserve Bank of India (RBI), being the central bank of our country, came out with a concept note on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) on October 7, 2022. Within a month of issuance of this note which was intended to create awareness about the digital currency among the general public, RBI has come out hurriedly with the pilot issuance of whole sale CBDC on November 1, 2022; further retail digital currency has been introduced on December 1, 2022.

BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR AND THE COMMUNISTSBEFORE joining the Communist Party More had a series of discussions with Babasaheb Ambedkar. He was trying to explain to Dr Ambedkar about the nature of the communist movement and the advantages for the dalits from such a movement. Finally, Dr Ambedkar said that he would not come in the way of his joining this mighty struggle of mankind.

AS we approach the 120th birth anniversary of Comrade Ramchandra Babaji More (on March 1, 2023) it would be important to understand the relevance to the present dalit movement of this first revolutionary among the depressed classes who joined the Communist Party in Maharashtra way back in the twenties of the last century.In the recently held national executive meeting of the Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch on July 17-18, 2022, among the 14 tasks underlined in the annual plan, the first is to use the celebrations of Dr B R Ambedkar’s birth anniversary on April 14 and utilie it to propagate against

WHILE Kerala can be proud of the large number of functioning public libraries in India, Kannur district located in the north of the state has the distinction of ranking first in the state with more than a thousand libraries.  Kannur has thus become the logical place of choice for holding this first Indian Library Congress from January 1-3, 2023.Kerala has pioneered the growth of the public library through popular participation for more than a century, taking this institution beyond the confines of universities, state repositories and privately held book collections.

THE world today seems very far away from those heady revolutionary days when the October Revolution in Russia happened. It is 105 years since this historic revolution took place which resulted in the world’s first socialist State.  It is 31 years since the end of the Soviet Union, the period since which was marked by the ascendancy of imperialism.The three decades since 1991 saw a renewed round of aggressive wars of intervention by US imperialism and NATO.  The targets were developing countries which did not possess nuclear weapons and had comparatively weaker armed forces.