-Frontline There are no effective vaccines against Japanese encephalitis, but its spread can be controlled in India through vector management.  JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS, or JE, has become endemic in many parts of the country, occurring repeatedly in epidemic form in many of them—for instance, in parts of Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh. One can expect JE-type epidemics year after year in States where prolonged drought-like conditions are followed by heavy monsoons. This leads to...

-The Times of India Internationally acclaimed academician Noam Chomsky of Massachusetts Institute of Technology of the United States has warned that Koodankulam could be another Bhopal disaster in waiting. In a solidarity letter to the struggling people he said: "Nuclear energy is a very dangerous initiative, particularly in countries like India, which has had more than its share of industrial disasters, Bhopal being the most famous." "I would like to express my...

-The Economist Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton Beddoes IN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux...

-The Times of India The Syrian Christian who could not speak Gujarati found it difficult to find a paying guest accommodation when he first reached the city of his destiny, Anand. But soon, Verghese Kurien would turn the small Gujarat town into the heart of India's white revolution. In the process, Kurien would also stitch together a cooperative movement of millions of women and farmers into owning a brand which generations...

-The Indian Express A little over 11 years ago, when the Congress defeated the Asom Gana Parishad and Tarun Gogoi took over as chief minister of Assam, people had their doubts. Would this man who had spent most of his political career since 1971 as a Lok Sabha member be able to run this state? The state, with its unique tangle of ethnicity and politics, has, after all, always been a...