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“A corporator who had called on me chanced upon my documents of artificial rainfall in 1992. He asked me to visit BMC and explain the process. The next day, I was given the job,” he said, in his office at Prabhadevi.
“We have asked Meckoni and IMD to study the feasibility of artificial rain,” said additional municipal commissioner, (projects), Anil Diggikar.
Meckoni, however, cautioned: “The present situation is worse than in 1992. The population has increased and so has the water requirement.”
On July 23, 1992, with a handful of men and city engineers, the rainmaker set up 10 stations in a three km radius of Tansa and Upper Vaitarna lakes. The experiments began at 10.30 am once the atmospheric conditions were found right. In half an hour, iodide fumes from generators reached the clouds; within an hour, it rained.
“Not many people believed it but it does rain within 90 minutes. It rained up to 100 mm in the lake areas and later there was a continuous downpour,” Meckoni said.
The process involves sprinkling silver iodide droplets on flaming charcoal. The iodide vapour, its properties similar to that of ice particles, rises and increases the cloud density to the required 1 lakh ice particles per cubic metre. “At a temperature lower than 5°C at cloud summit, the silver iodide crystallizes, attracts moisture and soon condenses resulting in rainfall,” he said.
Meckoni estimates it would cost the BMC Rs 10 lakh for 10 experiments in the 6-km radius of lake areas. The experiments can be repeated till it rains.
Born in drought-prone Kutch in Gujarat, Meckoni first learnt of cloud seeding after a chance meeting with an Israeli farmer who would not accept the absence of vegetation due to low rainfall. “He suggested inducing rainfall like farmers did in Israel,” Meckoni said.
After a year of learning, the commerce student experimented in his native village in 1992. “It rained a lot and all villagers were happy,” he said. The next stop was Bombay which was hit by a water crisis.
Yet, the rainman prefers natural rain. “Artificial rainfall is the last resort in a crisis but I am praying that it rains naturally. Nothing can match the magic of natural rain.”
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It is illegal and inhuman to desist cloud seeding operations by the Central and State Governments to provide public health and safety. According to the Supreme court Judgement given by Justice Kuldip Singh in order to protect the environment which includes supply of safe drinking water to the people the precautionary principle takes precedence over other rules and regulations. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage to public health and safety, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used according to International cloud seeding experts like Prof.T.Shivaji Rao. As a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. Prof.Shivaji Rao insists that doubts have no place where heavy human losses and casualties may be involved due to scarcity of drinking water which indirectly forces people to contaminated water that leads to large scale diseases and when the doubts being raised by scientists, engineers and officials against cloud seeding may be simply wrong. Then what matters is according to Justice V.R Krishna Iyer, the irreparable cost of human life and not the large expenditure that may be required to protect health and safety. Hence cloud seeding must be promoted by all the states in collaboration with the Union Government as practiced in China.
CLOUD SEEDING IS A GOD SENT GIFT TO INCREASE RAINS.I have worked with Shantilal N.Meckoni successfully for cloud seeding operatons in 1993 at Hyderabad and in 1995 in Anantapur and we got successful results.Cloud seeding is a pure science.Its technology,if applied properly gives good results.Natural clouds do not empty all their water content due to shortage of optimum impegnating chemical seeds which are silver iodide particles for cold clouds and hygroscopic particles for warm clouds.Today we cannot expect natural rains because man has highly polluted the atmosphere with the result that climate and weather systems have changed and prevent normal clouds to give rain over heat islands like industrialised Bombay,Hyderabad or Visakhapatnam where greenery has been replaced with bald hills that get heated and such heat repels the rain-bearing clouds with the result that people suffer from water scarcity and depleted ground water tables.So we have to go in for cloud seeding to get water