Hodge gave basis for the homogeneous co-ordinate rings of the Grassmannian and its Schubert varieties in terms of "standard monomials" in the Plucker co-ordinates. This clasical work of Hodge was extended to the generalized flag variety and its Schubert varieties by Lakshmibai-Littelmann-Musili-Seshadri. We shall give a survey talk on this generalization and will also relate many important algebraic varieties to Schubert varieties.