Costly and Fleeting Delhi Artificial Rain Experiment Under Fire

The Delhi government’s recent cloud-seeding initiative, intended to generate artificial rain and wash away the city’s toxic air, has drawn harsh criticism from environmental experts who say it’s a pricey gimmick rather than a sustainable fix.

Under a memorandum of understanding between the city’s environment department and IIT Kanpur, the pilot programme budget of rs 3.2 crore covered five planned trials roughly rs 64 lakh per attempt. In three cloud-seeding sorties in north Delhi, no meaningful rainfall resulted, and the city’s Air Quality Index (AQI) remained stuck in the ‘very poor’ to ‘poor’ zones.

One prominent voice in the criticism is Anumita Roychowdhury from the Centre for Science and Environment, who says: “Even if the rains wash out pollutants, the pollution will bounce back quickly… the impact lasts hours to a couple of days.” She stresses the approach is not sustainable for the whole winter, and that lasting air-quality improvements come only from reducing emissions at the source.

Another expert, Shahzad Gani of IIT Delhi, points out the logistical and scientific limitations: during winter, Delhi’s skies are typically very dry, moisture a key ingredient for rain induction is lacking, and any rain event might anyway be caused by a western disturbance rather than cloud-seeding.

Sunil Dahiya of think-tank EnviroCatalysts adds that cosmetic fixes like cloud-seeding, smog towers or smog-guns may offer short-term benefits but don’t replace sector-wise emission controls in transport, power, construction and dust management across the airshed.

Environmental activist Bhavreen Kandhari warns that cloud-seeding under conditions where atmospheric moisture is already present makes little sense: the skies might already be primed for rain, so the extra trigger is redundant and expensive.

In short: while cloud-seeding might garner media attention and appear as an action-plan, experts argue it does little to tackle the underlying problem of emissions and dust. For Delhi’s air-quality woes to improve meaningfully and lastingly policymakers will need to shift effort and funding from weather hacks to structural emission-reductions.