In Delhi, although illegal, the trade is flourishing, and this shop is one of many that trade in it under the counter.Yesterday a young Japanese woman visited the shop and said she wanted to buy a large number of shatoosh shawls, for which she would pay in dollars. Poachers shoot them in the winter, when their coats are at their thickest, then shear off the wool. The thread makes its way via Nepal to Kashmir, the only place where it is still legal, where highly skilled craftsmen weave it into shawls of extraordinary delicacy. Small schoolchildren in powder-blue uniforms travel crammed like battery hens into a wooden box hauled by a groaning cyclist. Fat ladies sally forth in rickshaws to buy jewels, their young daughters perched on the axle.
Under a black marble statue of Gandhi outside Delhi’s vaguely rococo old town hall, a posse of plain- clothes policemen sit sweating in a Hindustan Ambassador, waiting for the phone to ring.On the far side of this whirlpool of traffic, on an upper floor, is a shop that sells shawls: pashmina and cashmere for the wealthy, coarser wool for the rest Samples are displayed on the walls.

But the most desirable item sold by this shop is neither displayed nor advertised.Shatoosh, which means “king of wools” is the finest wool in the world. But its trade is illegal, because it is leading to the extinction of a Tibetan antelope, the chiru, which produced it.Chiru roam the vast spaces of the Tibetan plateau. Porters pad down the middle of the road with huge squashy bundles on their heads. CHANDNI CHOWK is the most historic but also the most hysterical corner of Delhi: abutting Shah Jahan’s magnificent Red Fort, the main street sliced through by the British after the uprising of 1857 is today a maelstrom of dilapidated cycle rickshaws and trucks and taxis and porters and shoppers all fighting their way through the capital’s most teeming bazaar. Only last week, hundreds of Christian homes in one village were razed by a Hindu mob.Ms Short will also visit Andra Pradesh in the south, where the department is spending pounds 46.5m on a programme to build thousands of new primary schools.Under the leadership of the chief minister, Chandrababu Naidu, Andra Pradesh is rapidly becoming the most go-ahead state in the country: Ms Short’s department is one of many international organisations, including the World Bank, pouring money into the state’s coffers, to prove that Mr Naidu’s mantra of education, liberalisation and globalisation does indeed work wonders The British minister can expect a warm welcome.. But after 51 years as a free country, nearly half the population remains illiterate and, as illiteracy has a direct impact on population growth, it is arguably in the whole world’s interest to get the poorest Indians reading and writing.After arriving this afternoon in Delhi, a city that is rapidly making a name as one of the most lawless in Asia (six murders reported on Saturday alone), Ms Short flies to Orissa on the east coast.Orissa is one of the six states that the Department for International Development is backing new Unicef and Indian government programmes to improve sanitation, hygiene and water supply.A region of wild, natural beauty and chronic under-development, and where a quarter of the population aretribespeople, Orissa has recently seen an upsurge of violence between Hindu and Christian factions within tribal villages. For one thing, the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee seems to be bashful about the whole subject – the ideology of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party centres on self-sufficiency.And why should a nation rich and sophisticated enough to produce nuclear weapons and the missile systems to deliver them deserve British charity? If India is demanding a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, should not it teach its own children to read and to write?India has, in fact,been making strides in that direction.

Under Labour, what used to be called Overseas Aid has been given a higher priority and a bigger budget, and India is a major beneficiary.
Development aid to India deserves to be controversial. CLARE SHORT, the Secretary of State for International Development, flies to Delhi today for a six-day visit to inspect how her department’s money is being put to use. Experts say the germ, spread through the air via water droplets, kills one in every six people infected.The latest episode may hold new clues for doctors studying the disease. In the Netherlands, Louis Timmer, director of Westfriese Gasthuis hospital, said: “We were surprised that the cases were among people of all ages and that those who became ill were not physically weak to begin with.”The hospital is caring for 26 people with the disease, six of whom are in intensive care.Westfriese Flora is one of more than 100 flower and bulb events held each year in the Netherlands, where tourists, farmers and buyers inspect the goods of a multibillion- dollar industry.Evelien Engelman, spokeswoman for the Horticulture Product Board, which represents the country’s flower industry, said there wereconcerns the outbreak could discourage people from attending future flower shows even if it was found to have come from one of the other exhibitions (AP). None of the 30 employees at the exhibition hall has become infected.The outbreak prompted the Environment Minister, Jan Pronk, to propose tighter laws on drinking water systems and said inspections of venues for public events would be increased.Legionnaires’ disease first surfaced in 1976 at a convention of the American Legion in Pennsylvania, where 220 of the 4,000 people attending were infected and 34 died.The bacteria believed to cause the illness are found in soil and thrive in air-conditioning ducts, storage tanks and rivers. We do it every year and this time it was a calamity of unknown proportions,” said Wim Boon, an organiser of the show.With new deaths and infections reported almost daily, Jan Haanstra, Mayor of Bovenkarspel and chairman of the show, is anxiously awaiting the results of investigations that are trying to trace the source.Initial speculation pointed to a water fountain or other water decorations at the show, but this has not been confirmed.On Friday, medical teams widened their investigation to two other events held simultaneously with Westfriese Flora in the same 1930s complex: a household goods exhibition and a consumer products show.