Working from home allows a city-dweller to escape the daily drudgery of commuting. When such an individual goes out even for a brief sojourn within the city, she is quickly annoyed by the condition of roads and the interminable traffic jams. The wait appears endless. What  a waste of time and energy!  Do we ever care to find how many man days we lose by keeping our women and men waiting on the roads? What is its effect on the environment, on...

Serial No. Young Animal 1 calf antelope/buffalo/camel/cattle/elephant/elk/giraffe/hartebeest/rhinoceros/seal/whale 2 cheeper grouse/quail/partridge 3 colt horse 4 cub badger/bear/fox/leopard/lion/tiger/walrus/wolf 5 cygnet swan 6 duckling duck 7 eaglet eagle 8 elver eel 9 eyas hawk 10 fawn caribou/deer 11 filly horse 12 foal horse/zebra 13 fry fish 14 gilt pig 15 gosling goose 16 joey kangaroo/wallaby/possum 17 kid goat/roedeer 18 kit...

Serial No. Animal Male Female 1 antelope buck doe 2 badger boar sow 3 bear boar sow 4 bobcat tom lioness 5 buffalo bull cow 6 camel bull cow 7 caribou stag doe 8 cat tom queen 9 cattle bull cow 10 chicken cock hen 11 cougar tom lioness 12 coyote dog bitch 13 deer stag doe 14 dog dog bitch 15 donkey jackass jennyass 16 duck drake duck 17 elephant bull cow 18 ferret jack jill 19 fish cock hen 20 fox fox vixen 21 giraffe bull cow 22 goat billygoat...

The other day I read a report (Harvard talks back to hard work: Professor finds Modi’s election victory like a Bollywood blockbuster) in The Economic Times on the remarks made by Bhaskar Chakravorti, a Tufts University public policy professor, on Narendra Modi’s latest election victory. The report also contained comments about what the author considered a ‘policy failure’, namely demonetisation. The most intriguing...

Rabi Nayak is a thin, dark-complexioned young man. He looks fragile but is not really weak. He lives in the vicinity and helps me with a few jobs for small payments. He lives with his father on the basement of a nearby apartment building where his father works as the janitor. I know their family for the last forty years. The Nayaks came from a remote village of Odisha’s Ganjam district and they have traditionally worked in a college here...

The Santhals are a tribe of east India. According to the census of 1951, their total population is two hundred eighty-one thousand (281,000)*. They live mainly in Orissa’s Mayurbhanj, Bihar’s Jharkhand (Santhal Parganah, Hazaribag, Manbhum and Singbhum districts) and West Bengal (Midnapur, Purulia, Bankura and Burdwan districts). The Santali language is a dialect of Khewari. The Santhals are bilingual and besides their own language,...