A failed attempt at making rain

Delhi's mixed, or rather unsuccessful, attempts at cloud seeding this past week are a classic display of grabbing the wrong end of the stick. As a measure to bring down the air pollution by inducing rain or moisture, based on experiments around the world, cloud seeding would rank as an expensive and unreliable way to address the issue of poor-quality air or, specifically, to bring down the Air Quality Index (AQI) levels. Even IIT-Kanpur, with whom the Delhi government collaborated on the experiment, stated that cloud seeding cannot be a long-term answer to Delhi's perennial pollution problem. Despite the lack of rain, the experiment helped bring about limited moisture conditions which, in turn, marginally improved the air quality. Delhi's AQI, in the past two weeks, has been in the 'very poor' to 'hazardous' range of 300-400.

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To paper over the ineffective results, the official line was to position cloud seeding as a mere experiment in which success and failure would both make for lessons. However, this is neither the occasion nor should it be the approach to something as sensitive as cloud seeding. It is the technique of alter-

Given Delhi's continuing problems with air pollution, cloud seeding is so much a spectacle-and little else.

ing clouds to make rain by firing small particles, most commonly of silver iodide, into clouds to produce precipitation or rain. The technique is used around the world, including in China, the United States, and