The Germans may condemn windmills by calling them a 'scar on the landscape' but in India it seems quite the opposite.

With hundreds of wind turbines producing clean green energy at an economically competitive cost, the Indian wind energy market is emerging as the third most rapidly growing wind market in the world, after Germany and Spain.

No wonder big business houses such as Tata, Bajaj, Jindal, Ajanta and Manikchand group as well as high profile personalities like Aishwarya Rai are investing their money in this sector, which has significantly evolved over the years. Rai recently bought two wind turbine machines of 1.25 MW each in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.

"With an installed capacity of over 3,000 MW as of December 2004, wind energy production has registered a 36 per cent increase in this year. India has thus emerged as the fifth largest wind energy producer in the world," said Dr Ajay Mathur, member of the governing council of the Indian Wind Energy Association.

In fact, India is one of the few countries having an exclusive ministry for Non-Conventional Energy Sources and the wind energy programmes in the country were initiated way back in 1983-84 towards the end of the Sixth Plan.