Feature Article

India is endowed with annual average rainfall of nearly 1,200 mm but a very small proportion of it is managed effectively. The various estimates on potential for rainwater harvesting suggest vast opportunities for mitigating the shortages. However, the socio-administrative measures in vogue do not encourage participation by the beneficiaries. There are several success stories in rainwater harvesting but these initiatives are rarely institutionalised at national level.

The National Food for Work Programme (NFFWP), launched in 2004, identified 50 backward districts, where employment guarantee scheme was to get started. The 150 districts were identified by the Planning Commission on the basis of three criteria, Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) population, agricultural productivity per worker, and agricultural wage rate in the district. The author find that the final choice for the NFFWP was not consistent with the methodology mentioned, nor can it be defended by using other measures of backwardness.

Increased demand for ethanol and the financial participation of major lenders has sparked the construction of large production facilities outside the U.S. Midwest Corn Belt. Their new locations - deemed 'destination markets' - are closer to major markets for ethanol and its associated co-products.

Systematic evidence on the patterns of health deprivation among indigenous peoples remains scant in developing countries. The authors investigate the inequalities in mortality and substance use between indigenous and non-indigenous, and within indigenous, groups in India, with an aim to establishing the relative contribution of socioeconomic status in generating health inequalities.

The International Maritime Organization's (IMO) "Marpol Annex-6" limits on sulfur in ocean-ship bunker fuel and diesel engine emissions have made only a slight difference so far in the task of slashing diesel pollution in and near the world's ports, experts said. Yet technologies that could dramatically reduce diesel emissions from ocean vessels are now making significant progress.

Last month, the world remembered the victims of us savagery in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (atomic bombs were thrown on the two cities in August 1945), yet there was the disturbing absence of the call

"The match was declared closed at the loss of one planet.' This could well have been the closing statement of anyone doing a running commentary on the proceedings of the 26th General Assembly of the