Until recently, most assumed that the American West was a natural dust bowl where every cowboy breathed true grit. Now it seems that the dust was mostly man-made and came with the cows. Head 'em up, move 'em out - and choke on the dust. Before the cows and the cattle trails immortalised in TV series such as Rawhide, there was no dust. It could even explain some of the changes in the region now blamed on global warming.

The colonial dispensation in north Bihar believed that the rivers of the flood plains needed to be controlled. The zamindar became the pivot around which the implementation of these flood control efforts revolved. Along with the railways and roads, the uncontrolled manner in which many zamindary embankments were built led to a deterioration in the flood situation.

The pivot around which the improvement of maternal health revolved was the Indian woman doctor and her growing presence from the 1900s was to be seen at hospitals and welfare centres in the Bombay presidency, promoting knowledge of more hygienic birthing methods and safe infant care.

This essay does not probe why there was a malarial epidemic in Bengal in the 19th century, instead it explores how a series of dispersed and dissimilar debilities came to be represented as a single, continuous epidemic of malaria in Bengal and beyond for over most of the 19th century. The making of the Burdwan fever epidemic can hardly be ascribed to conveniently traceable intentions or a straightforward series of causes. The history of the unfolding of the epidemic hints at a "game of relationships'.

This study re-examines the notions in colonial India about the causes of malaria, specifically discussing the environmental reasons pointed to at the time. It shows how and to what extent some of the widely held ideas of the colonial era on environmental causation contributed to and, at the same time, shaped a kind of environmental awareness, which became a part of medico-social thinking in India. It also adds a new dimension to the thinking on malaria in colonial India by situating the environmental paradigm within a social and economic context.