Use of pesticides in India has substantially increased in recent years. It is increasingly becoming an inevitable input in intensive agriculture systems, which have mainly been fuelled by changes in cropping pattern and practice. Survey results confirmed that there has been a widespread lack of awareness on pesticides and their appropriate handling among the applicators in India. Implementation of alternate pest management strategies to reduce pesticide consumption was found to be ineffective.

Bridging the infrastructure gap by promoting public private partnerships has become the preferred mode for the execution of public projects. The government needs to develop the necessary capability to handle the large number of PPP projects that are to be taken up during the Eleventh Plan.

Progressive Maharashtra has rushed to install wind energy plants. But, ask nidhi jamwal and shikha lakhanpal, reporting from Mumbai and Dhule, why so little electricity is actually generated? Is there an other purpose to private interest in wind?

China may look like a carbon-guzzling monster, but there's a clean-tech superpower struggling to get out, says Changhua Wu.

Indian policymakers are fascinated by Shanghai and they seek to develop Mumbai into another Shanghai. This vision is based entirely on the fascination with the Shanghai/Pudong skyline, without any substantive understanding of or facts about the growth in the Chinese city. True, there has been rapid growth in Shanghai, but most of this growth has been to the benefit of corporations (public sector and foreign controlled), little has gone to the city's households. Since the late 1990s, the poor of Shanghai have in fact seen a relative decline in incomes vis-