Believe it or not, here's a cost-effective, environmental-friendly solution to our rain woes. IIT alumni Dr Raja Marathe has been making rain in Nanded, not once or twice, but 14 times. Sunday MiD DAY travels with the rainmaker
Believe it or not, here's a cost-effective, environmental-friendly solution to our rain woes. IIT alumni Dr Raja Marathe has been making rain in Nanded, not once or twice, but 14 times. Sunday MiD DAY travels with the rainmaker
Everybody may love a good drought, but there is always the exception.
Dr Raja Marathe, IIT Bombay alumni and a former Naxal leader who returned to India from the United States a few years ago, may as well be known as Nanded's rainman. Armed with burning tyres packed with salt, Marathe has single-handedly floated his own rain seeding project in the villages of Nanded (constituency of CM Ashok Chavan) called Lavan Vajra that has now been sanctioned by the collector of the district.
Marathe, an engineer by profession, a doctorate in 'Lasers' from RICE university, Houston andu00a0 one of the architects of the 'Param Super computer', heads the project that has managed to get an additional 100 mm rainfall and in some cases also hit 200 mm, in three weeks. When Sunday MiD DAY accompanied Marathe on his cloud seeding experiment on Friday, he had already finished more than 20 experiments. While passing through the villages of Nanded district, we were greeted by many villagers with happy stories a turnaround from the time when Marathe was looked upon with scepticism. Refuting the claims of the rain being a coincidence, Marathe says, "If we only had rain after the first or second attempt, it might have been a coincidence. But we've done this 14 times now with good results."
How green is burning tyres?
Will this project pollute the environment? "Had the sulphur and the nitrogen levels been high in the tyres, it would have caused the damage but the levels here are negligible. The amount of smoke released by the tyres will not affect the people as it is done in open space. The smoke directly moves upwards in the sky, thus there is nothing to worry," says Marathe.
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Marathe and his burning tyre rain projectu00a0pic/Varun Singh |
Where it all began
Marathe kicked off the project with 20 odd villagers in Sujale, another village located nearly 50 kilometers from the city. According to Digambar Jadhav of Sujale, they had sown their seeds in July, but there were no rains till August. "We approached Marathe for help and within two weeks he came up with the idea of burning tyres and sprinkling salt on them. Since the first experiment we experienced heavy rainfall and today ours is the most self-sufficient village in the whole Taluka," he said.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0
How expensive is the project?
Compared to the Rs 8 crore BMC cloud seeding behemoth, this method is quite cheap. Tyres cost nearly Rs 200 and salt worth Rs 100 is used. One such experiment can produce nearly 40 mm of rainfall, sufficient to irrigate fields measuring more than four kilometres.u00a0
The cloud seeding came as a big relief for farmers across more than 100 villages. Umakant Deshpande (58), who owns 67 acres of land in Nawandi village, 60 kilometers from Nanded city, was initially unconvinced. When Deshpande saw Sujale, the nearby village receiving rainfall after the experiment, he was willing to give it a go.
"I had heard about cloud seeding but thought it could be done only by helicopters and not with tyres. When I tried it in my village it started raining within four hours of the experiment," says Deshpande.
From sceptics to believers
Most villagers were aware of cloud seeding by aircrafts as it was conducted during last year's drought. "First we used wood, but then we started using tyres. The burnt tyres fumes were much more than those from wood and even the results had improved," says Santosh Deshmukh another villager. To further convince the villagers, Marathe and the Dr Shrikar Pardeshi collector of Nanded took samples of the rainwater after the experiments and sent it for testing at IIT Bombay. Tests showed that the chloride present in the sample was from the salt used for cloud seeding.
Meanwhile, Dr Pardeshi is persuading the government to approve the helicopter/aircraft cloud seeding project. "We need cloud seeding techniques in our district to be implemented on a larger scale so that the necessary water requirement is fulfilled," says Dr Pardeshi.
Until then though, bonfires of rubber and salt remain Nanded's only solace.
How it works
Prof T Shivaji Rao, director of environmental studies, Gitam University, Visakhapatnam, and scientific advisor to the Lavan Vajra Project explains, "The process involves sprinkling fine common salt over very hot fire, so that the salt vapourises and gets picked up by upward flowing hot air. The salt then enters the cloud. When salt vapours condense into fine salt particles within the cloud, the water vapour molecules and fine water droplets grow in size because of the reaction with sodium and chloride (salt's chemical composition of NaCl). This reaction forces the grown water droplets to collide with smaller droplets. Due to increasing size and weight the droplets fall down. This also increases the size of the cloud, producing additional rainfall, which a normal cloud wouldn't. Refusal to implement cloud seeding operations promotes poverty, disease and social unrest." Rao is also scientific advisor to the cloud seeding project by the govt of Andhra Pradesh since 2004.
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