Grains of memory

For years, it has been regular practice for school buildings in rural India to double as granaries during harvest time to tide over the chronic shortage of storage facilities with state agencies. Even so, senior officials from the agriculture ministry were surprised when, during a visit to one of the main rice-producing regions, they found two rooms in a primary school building being used to store grain. Their surprise had nothing to do with the use to which the rooms were put but the fact that they were named after Jawaharlal Nehru and Madan Mohan Malviya, who were, no doubt, expected to have been a source of inspiration for the children.