Art: City on the Plain

Deep, in India's Punjab, near the Himalayan foothills, a burning sun beat down last week on 30,000 sweating laborers. Women in bright saris poured concrete into wooden forms; long lines of men gouged out foundations, spread smoking tar on road surfaces with hands swathed in jute sacking. Bulldozers grunted and dusty trucks rumbled up with loads of hand-made brick. The name of the place was Chandigarh, and there last week the world's most modern city was rising from a desolate plain.

India's government chose Chandigarh in 1950 as the site for a new Punjab...

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