In your paper, you wrote:
>In the seventies the Government of India gave subsidies to start 24
>compost plants in the major cities and around 1975 ten plants
>were started (Shah et al., 1997). Due to technical problems and
>financial losses all of them were closed down, except the Karnataka
>Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) in Bangalore.
>Several technical changes were made, which facilitated its
>continuation. KCDC was set up by the Karnataka Government,
>but it is managed as an autonomous body.

One success out of 34 projects is really bad news. The KCDC case may just be
a very exceptional case.

I like to know more about the failures as there certainly is a lot to learn
from them. I hope you can select one case to elaborate it
further..........the composting programme developed by the Center for
Environment Education (CEE) seems to be a good case since we can also get
feedbacks from V. Jagannath who is from Bangalore and Nadine Dulac from WASTE
(the Netherlands).

CEE project started in 1996 and produces <0.1 ton of compost per day (1.35
tons per year). Separated organic waste from households
is composted in pits with manual turning using a rake once every three days.
The matured compost (45 days) is sieved.

Q: what was the amount of waste (input) processed at CEE ?
Q: how many workers (collectors and composters) were employed ?
Q: how much was paid as labour costs (for collection of wastes from
households and for composting) ?

 regards
jacky foo