JAYATI GHOSH-Frontline

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Milk vendors on a waterlogged street in Kolkata. The more pressing concern of the flooding is the likely spread of water-borne diseases such as gastroenteritis, cholera and typhoid.-PTI

Water everywhere

The lack of drainage, which is finally at the core of the problem in Kolkata, is in fact a major issue in most of our major cities.

On the outskirts of Bhopal. The huge wealth of traditional knowledge is often ignored by policymakers as is the remarkable ability of farmers to adapt and develop cultivation practices according to their own specific situation and experience. A file picture.-PRAKASH/AP

Access to farming knowledge

Extension workers continue to disseminate knowledge about practices that may be not only irrelevant but even harmful.

The Morgan Stanley building in New York city. In Britain, the former chairman of the Financial Services Authority was hired by Morgan Stanley within three months of his stepping down from his regulatory position.-DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Paying the price

Insider Philip Augars book on investment banking analyses how the financial sector functions, and is a damning indictment of the practices of financie

In New Delhi on March 7, 2006, farmers from Kerala protesting against the severe agrarian crisis and the alarming rate of farmers suicides in the States Wayanad district.-R.V. MOORTHY

A policy for unfreedom

The U.P. governments Agriculture Infrastructure and Investment Policy is no solution to the current agrarian crisis; instead, it is likely to intensif

At Shahjahanabad in Delhi, famous for its roadside eateries. Food safety regulations assume that food cooked on the streets is more unhygienic than that cooked in restaurants even though some studies have proved otherwise.-V.V. KRISHNAN

On the margins

The absence of political will to implement the National Policy on Urban Street Vendors keeps this section of society prisoners of bias.

A boy lies on the stairs of a footbridge as he begs for alms in Jakarta. Conditions of a large section of the poor have not improved in the countries affected by the 1997 crisis despite the apparent aggregate economic 'recovery'.-BAY ISMOYO/AFP

Far from recovery

Financial crises do more than simply create sharp and painful economic shocks; they also alter longer-term economic trajectories in unfortunate ways.

In New Delhi, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram addressing a post-Budget meeting with the captains of industry, in New Delhi. This is a profit-led boom, driven by increasing inequality between workers and capitalists but also between big and small producers.-KAMAL NARANG

What is driving the economic boom?

It is the result of the corporate sector's increasing savings and investment, enabled by higher profits which, in turn, are facilitated by government

A woman labourer carrying home firewood in Delhi. According to NSS data, 19 per cent of urban women are engaged in collection of fuel wood for household consumption.-SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY

Work without pay

There should be not only social recognition of unpaid labour but also some attempt by society to reward or compensate those who perform it.

PepsiCo and other companies have used the contract system for the cultivation of basmati rice, chillies and groundnut, as well as for vegetable crops such as potato.-K.K. MUSTAFAH

Crops on contract

The failure of public institutions to provide farmers protection and support is the reason that contract farming is still promoted.

At a construction site in Beijing. China is becoming more like other countries of the developing world that have gone in for export-oriented manufacturing production along with trade liberalisation.-JASON LEE/REUTERS

Jobless growth in China

China is experiencing the same disjunction between economic growth and employment generation that is plaguing many other developing countries.

GLENN GOULD IN rehearsal in Toronto, 1974.-@ WALTER CURTIN/LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA/PA-137052

The music of a man's life

A look at the life and philosophy of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.

At a government-run primary school in Howrah district of West Bengal.-ARUNANGSU ROY CHOWDHURY

Short shrift to school education

It is clear from the Union Budget that the government continues to wash its hands of the financial commitment necessary to ensure universal school edu

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