The volume presents V.O.C. as a great and dauntless political leader, a pioneer in Trade Unionism in South India, a versatile scholar and a good critic of Tamil language and literature and Saiva Siddhanta philosophy.

Valliappan Olaganthan Chidambaram Pillai, (1872-1936) popularly known by his initials, V.O.C. (spelt Vaa. Oo.Ce in Tamil), also known as Kappalottiya Tamilan "The Tamil Helmsman", was a Tamil political leader. He was a disciple of Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

Contents: Introduction, Environmental Degradation and Rural Poverty, Environmental Degradation in Study Districts, Impact of Environment Degradation on Rural Poverty, Summary and Conclusions.

"Originally published, in somewhat different form, in 2016 by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, Great Britain"--Title page verso.

DIVA collection of essays arguing for a global and economically based modernity driven by capitalist development./div

In 1906, Britain's grip on the world was unassailable. Its navy ruled the seas, and its trade empire spanned the globe. But in the small port town of Tuticorin, a lawyer named V.O. Chidambaram Pillai—known to the world as VOC—had a revolutionary idea that would challenge the might of the empire itself. VOC's plan was audacious: to launch the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, a venture that would compete head-on with the British India Steam Navigation Company, the shipping giant that controlled the region. To make his dream a reality, he rallied native traders and patriotic citizens, raising the capital needed to launch his daring enterprise. But the company faced a formidable foe: British mercantile interests and the imperial state both backed its competitor, giving it deep pockets and brazen government backing. VOC and his allies would have to defy overwhelming odds to make their venture a success. Swadeshi Steam is a tale of heroism and defiance in the face of colonial oppression. Based on four decades of research in archives around the world, this inspiring saga showcases the power of one individual's vision to ignite a movement.

Throughout history, speech and storytelling have united communities and mobilized movements. Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Modern examines this phenomenon in Tamil-speaking South India over the last three centuries, charting the development of political oratory and its influence on society. Supplementing his narrative with thorough archival work, Bernard Bate begins with Protestant missionaries' introduction of the sermonic genre and takes the reader through its local vernacularization. What originally began as a format of religious speech became an essential political infrastructure used to galvanize support for new social imaginaries, from Indian independence to Tamil nationalism. Completed by a team of Bate's colleagues, this ethnography marries linguistic anthropology to performance studies and political history, illuminating new geographies of belonging in the modern era.