50 items in this section. Displaying page 5 of 5
Green Fields in a Concrete Jungle
August 5: Imagine green paddy fields and a calm pond next to it. The breeze that blows over the still waters is cool and refreshing in the afternoons. Imagine all this in the middle of a city. Sounds dreamlike? Actually that is what Govind Mhatre’s farm is like. Like a dream. It looks like it has been displaced from a picture book and placed in a wrong setting. Govind’s farm exists in the middle of a bustling city — complete with its concrete buildings and polluting vehicles –in the suburb of Borivli in Mumbai....
Hullo! My Name is Nershwn
He is eight years old and has already travelled a great distance from his original home, to Delhi. It was not a happy shift. What made his family leave its home was fear for the lives of its member. For, Majuli island, where they lived, is in Assam, different groups of people in Assam are fighting for what they think are their natural rights. Nershwn speaks of all this in his own way. He gives a snapshot of the world as he sees it, from his height....
Hanoi's Good Samaritan
Hanoi’s Good Samaritan [Illustration by Shiju George] November 4:The streets of cities in Vietnam teem with young boys who, despite their sad eyes, have dazzling smiles on their faces, and speak halting, broken English, that sounds charming to the ears. They sell postcards, shine shoes and hassle tourists with remarkably impressive sob-stories about needing money for sick parents, school fees and English lessons. It’s a combination that never fails to move the tourist for whose benefit of course, the entire performance is staged....
End to Recession in Sight?
Where: New York, USA March 25, 2009 : The New York Stock Exchange and European Stock markets showed high trading figures after the American government announced that it had planned another bailout package for banks. The United States Treasury is also expected to pump $1 trillion into the market for buying up ‘toxic assets’. This means government will put money into those ‘bad assets’ which have frozen trading and aggravated the recession. Mr. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank in USA, said he expects that the recession in the country will end this year....
Help Save Our Home
Raju Kher has just passed his Madhyamik or class X exams. He is very happy for having scored a first division and achieving ‘distinctions’ in four subjects. A student achieves a ‘distinction’ by scoring at least 75 marks in a subject. But Raju’s distinctions are even more remarkable because he has nothing much to go by. He lives in a Home for the destitute – a home for the homeless and the poor. So there have been no tuitions for Raju, no energy foods to improve his brainpower during exam times, and no parents either to shower all the attention that an achiever usually gets....
The Minister who Couldn't Add
July 22: I want to say it simple and clear: I am bad at arithmetic. In school I could not even add up my marks in the annual report card. I could never figure out figures at all. So I have a sneaking sympathy for Miroslaw Handke for what happened to him recently. He lost his job because he couldn’t calculate. Handke is the Education Minister of Poland. Probably, his math skills are as bad as mine but he still went on to calculate the money that his Ministry would mark for the running of schools in the annual budget....
Prisoners Ride on Fried Snack Success
September 30: It all began with ‘bhajiya’ (fritters). A few years ago, prisoners of Sabarmati jail in the city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, began a ‘bhajiya’ corner. They sold crispy ‘bhajiya’, a favourite snack of Gujaratis, in the shop. Predictably enough, the snack was a big draw among people. Sales touched Rs. 20,000 per day. Inspired by the runaway success of their venture, the prisoners have decided to diversify. They have proposed a series of profitable ventures that they would like to set up in the coming months....
Heads of Government to Seek Solutions to World Economic Crisis at G20 Summit
Where: London, United Kingdom March 30, 2009 : The heads of the world’s 20 largest economic powers, the Group of 20 or G20, will assemble in London on April 2, 2009. The London summit will focus on finding solutions to the present global economic crisis. The G20 is a forum that includes G-7, the world’s seven leading industrialized nations — the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Canada — and the world’s largest developing world economies: Brazil, Russia, India and China (often referred to as BRIC)....
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