O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

Sachin for India
Bal Thackeray divisive as usual
The tongue-lashing that Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray has got from political leaders cutting across party lines as also from people at large clearly bears out that the unabashed Marathi card that he played in criticising legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar has misfired. Thackeray has never been known for moderation but his slamming Sachin for saying that Mumbai could not be monopolised and that all Indians had an equal right over it is the ultimate in outrageousness.

Deaths in incubators
Negligence and indifference to new-borns
When six new-born babies were killed in an incubator fire in Government Rajindra Hospital, Patiala, on January 31 it was thought that the incident was so ghastly that the kind of negligence that had caused the tragedy would never be repeated anywhere. But that presumption has proved to be horribly wrong. In an equally appalling case of medical negligence, seven infants have now died at a government hospital in the coastal Andhra city of Vijaywada.

Another police district
Make Punjab Police lean and efficient
The Punjab government has created one more police district called Jalandhar (Rural) and appointed one more DGP, the sixth in the state, contrary to the advice from the Finance Department, which has not much money in its kitty. Media reports say there are plans to create two more rural police districts at Patiala and Bathinda. 

• Thought for the Day

ARTICLE

No dialogue at this stage
Pakistan must honour its word on terrorism
by K. Subrahmanyam
A debate is on in the country whether India should accede to the Pakistani demand and get into the composite dialogue that was suspended in the wake of the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai. The Pakistanis maintain that without the resumption of the dialogue and reduction of Indian forces on their eastern borders they are unable to put in optimum military effort in their war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It is claimed that this view has the support of some American officials also.

MIDDLE

The inauguration
by Dr Anjali Mehta
A new piece of equipment had been bought at the hospital which had to be “inaugurated”. Unlike other instruments which had been bought and used without much fuss or preamble (and discovered accidentally by the intended users. Typically, a doctor would say. “hey the table looks cluttered today!” and someone would point out “That’s because these new lenses are lying on it”) this was different. A well-known public figure had funded the purchase and his generosity had to be highlighted. This would ensure that this was not the only cheque of its kind !

OPED

Crime and punishment
There is too much law and too little justice
by B.G. Verghese
It is strange and worrying that so many people in India appear to believe that punishment should not fit the crime. Manu Sharma, now serving a life sentence in Tihar jail for murdering Jessica Lall in 1999, was granted parole for a month in September and then for another month on the ground that he needed to observe his grandmother's death anniversary, visit his sick mother in Chandigarh and there attend to the family business.

New time zone for North-East
by Sanjoy Hazarika
As the sun rises in the North-East, much of India sleeps.  To paraphrase Jawaharlal Nehru’s memorable moving remarks when the sun set on the British Empire in 1947: “At the stroke of midnight when the world sleeps, India awakes to life and freedom.”  Indeed, as the early morning light washes across the North-east of India, darkness prevails over the rest of the country.

Can we really control the weather?
by Tom Choularton
Recently both Russia and China have claimed to be able to use cloud seeding to increase rainfall and snowfall, or change the location of where it falls. In the past, snow-making experiments have been carried out in North American ski resorts in the past with little evidence of success. So how have the Russian and Chinese scientists achieved this feat and what evidence is there that it is in fact due to cloud seeding?

EDITORIALS

Sachin for India
Bal Thackeray divisive as usual

The tongue-lashing that Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray has got from political leaders cutting across party lines as also from people at large clearly bears out that the unabashed Marathi card that he played in criticising legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar has misfired. Thackeray has never been known for moderation but his slamming Sachin for saying that Mumbai could not be monopolised and that all Indians had an equal right over it is the ultimate in outrageousness. Sachin’s remark that he is a Maharashtrian and he is proud of that but he is an Indian first, should be a lesson for every Indian. We are living in times in which electoral politics has touched a new low with parochialism and casteism being used by political leaders to divide society for narrow partisan ends. Sachin Tendulkar’s statement amounted to a rebuff to the “Marathi manoos” plank of the Shiv Sena and Raj Thackeray’s MNS which is deeply divisive and regrettable. The icon that Sachin is, his forthright support for the “Indian first” creed seeks to unite the country and not divide it. For this the country must salute this extraordinary cricketer who has the gift of a genius and is unusually humble.

Bal Thackeray has had an inglorious record of divisive politics. He began his political career with an ugly campaign against South Indians in Mumbai. In the recent assembly elections, when his son and heir-apparent, Uddhav Thackeray, shunned the agenda of hate and concentrated his attention on the development plank, there was surprise in political circles. Raj Thackeray, on the other hand, took up the ‘Marathi manoos’ plank which was originally Bal Thackeray’s and made some electoral gains. If Bal Thackeray’s dig at Sachin Tendulkar is a manifestation of one-upmanship over his nephew Raj, it is a sad reflection that nothing has changed with this rabble-rouser.

Sachin is a national hero and nothing that anyone says can detract from that. Now that Bal Thackeray has mud on his face, he must introspect and express regret over his remarks. The people of Maharashtra and of India in general love Sachin far too much and they would never forgive a person who seeks to belittle this jewel in India’s crown. 

Deaths in incubators
Negligence and indifference to new-borns

When six new-born babies were killed in an incubator fire in Government Rajindra Hospital, Patiala, on January 31 it was thought that the incident was so ghastly that the kind of negligence that had caused the tragedy would never be repeated anywhere. But that presumption has proved to be horribly wrong. In an equally appalling case of medical negligence, seven infants have now died at a government hospital in the coastal Andhra city of Vijaywada. Here too, the deaths occurred due to faulty incubators and ventilators. As is their wont, the hospital authorities tried to escape responsibility by initially claiming that the deaths occurred only due to various ailments that the newborns, all between two and three days old, were suffering from. It was only when the outrage became too widespread that the government ordered a probe and promised to take action against the negligent staff.

The parents of the diseased babies have alleged that only four out of 11 incubators were functioning at the hospital. The babies were allegedly put in broken incubators and the neo-natal ward was not even equipped with centralised oxygen system for incubators. As if all that was not callous enough, the newborns were left unattended because of the ongoing strike by junior doctors demanding hike in the stipend. Nothing could be more shocking than this virtual murder by sheer negligence of seven infants.

Many cases of negligence take place in government hospitals on a routine basis, but at least children should have been spared this inhumanity. The inquiry that has now been ordered should not become an exercise in buying time till public anger on the issue subsides. Responsibility should be quickly fixed and the guilty given exemplary punishment so that there is no repeat of the horrifying incident. Such a ghastly tragedy taking place even once is unthinkable. India has had the dubious distinction of witnessing it twice, that too in the same year. 

Another police district
Make Punjab Police lean and efficient

The Punjab government has created one more police district called Jalandhar (Rural) and appointed one more DGP, the sixth in the state, contrary to the advice from the Finance Department, which has not much money in its kitty. Media reports say there are plans to create two more rural police districts at Patiala and Bathinda. Police expansion is high on Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal’s agenda. He plans to have commandos in the Punjab Police on the pattern of the National Security Guards. Realising the cash-strapped state’s inability to bear the financial burden, he has asked the Centre for Rs 100 crore to “modernise” the force.

Though the state was rid of militancy long ago, the police districts have remained intact (their names have changed) and more are being created, possible to accommodate officers. VIP security has not been slashed. The police mindset has not changed. Frequent reports of custodial deaths, torture and excesses on citizens have tarnished the police image and credibility. According to the police’s own data, one rape is reported everyday and one woman murdered every second day. Ten per cent of the cases registered by the Punjab Police are questionable. Drug addiction could not have flourished in the state without police blessings at the grassroots level upwards.

In these days of fast communication and transport systems, why should a small state like Punjab have such a top-heavy police force? If one IG could head the police force in the undivided Punjab, why is one DGP not enough for the truncated state? Apart from six DGPs, the state has 13 ADGPs. The police force, it seems, exists more to protect VIPs and serve the interests of officers than ensure safety to the citizen. Despite the Supreme Court orders, police reforms are being implemented half-heartedly. The need is to make the police lean, mean and efficient as well as sensitise the policemen so that they learn to respect the rights and dignity of every individual.

Thought for the Day

Cruelty, like every other vice,requires no motive outside itself — it only requires opportunity. — George Eliot

ARTICLE

No dialogue at this stage
Pakistan must honour its word on terrorism
by K. Subrahmanyam

A debate is on in the country whether India should accede to the Pakistani demand and get into the composite dialogue that was suspended in the wake of the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai. The Pakistanis maintain that without the resumption of the dialogue and reduction of Indian forces on their eastern borders they are unable to put in optimum military effort in their war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It is claimed that this view has the support of some American officials also.

Others argue that dialogue with a nuclear neighbour is not only desirable but also imperative, and communication interruption is not in our interest. Some Indian analysts expect that the Prime Minister will come under pressure during his summit meeting with President Obama on November 24 to yield to the Pakistan demand for the resumption of the composite dialogue process.

The Indian stand has been that Pakistan should show adequate seriousness in prosecuting the 26/11 case and there should be action against the Lashkar -e-Toiba chief, Hafiz Saeed. Since American, Israeli, British, French and Singapore nationals were killed in the 26/11 terrorist strike, the Government of India owes it to its people as well as to the people of those countries that justice is done. Pakistan is not only testing India’s tolerance in this case but also that of the Americans. The US has the recordings of the phone conversations between the terrorists and their handlers. Pakistan has refused US agencies access to the accused in its custody. The Pakistanis have problems in bringing the LeT accused to trial since that would expose the Pakistani Army’s sponsorship of the attack.

Some new information is emerging with the arrest of David Headley and Tahawwur Rana by the FBI in Chicago. It would appear that Headley and Rana may be connected with the 26/11 attack and this is being investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in India. In the chargesheet filed in the US courts there are references to an unidentified person of the LeT and it is possible that it may be another Army officer whose identity is being shielded at present by the FBI.

If India’s NIA were to establish a connection between Headley and Rana and the 26/11 attack then the case in Chicago will take a different turn and those two will also be culpable for the killings on 26/11, including that of the Americans. Imagine the outrage in India, the US and elsewhere if the Government of India were to yield on the composite dialogue even as the Pakistanis dodge the 26/11 trial and the Hafiz Saeed case and Headley and Rana get involved in the case. After Pakistan received $13 billion from the US the Republicans, whose handling of General Musharraf during the last seven years, according to President Obama, only produced mixed results, will be able to criticise the President for being soft on those who killed six Americans on 26/11.

If Pakistan gets away with this dodging they will be emboldened to find new excuses not to commit themselves wholeheartedly to defeat the jihadis and dismantle their insfrastructure. They have already started complaining that while they push the Taliban into the Afghan territory in South Waziristan the US and NATO forces on the other side of the Durand Line are not playing their roles effectively. The Pakistan Army is looking for excuses not to carry out its campaign against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and its associate organisations. They have excuses galore — that the US and NATO are not doing their job, the US is not making funds and equipment available for use or the Indian Army is on the eastern border.

The composite dialogue was agreed to by Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee in January 2004 on General Musharraf’s assurance that no territory under Pakistani control would be allowed to be used to launch terrorist attacks on India. Not only 26/11 was launched from Pakistani soil but also the Pakistanis are making a mockery of the trial on the one side and arguing that Hafiz Saeed had been set free by the judiciary. It is obvious to both the Indian and US authorities that the Pakistani government is not interested in making out a case against Hafiz Saeed. Putting up a bad case and getting an accused acquitted is one of the oldest tricks of corrupt policemen.

President Obama has made it clear that Pakistan did not face any threat from India. He asserted, “So make no mistake, Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within.” The Pakistani argument that they are unable to shift their troops to fight the Taliban without troop reduction by India amounts to taking a stand that they would rather die of terrorist cancer than look at India realistically and not through a hate prism. India had never started a war. All four wars between the two countries were started by Pakistan. Indian troops are on the border because of Pakistan waging a covert war against India since 1989.

By putting forward this excuse of composite dialogue, a solution to the Kashmir problem and not taking effective action against jihadis, Pakistan wants to preserve its terrorist instrumentalities not only against India but the US as well. Without the US being subjected to a terrorist threat, money will not flow from Washington. Therefore, the LeT has to operate in the US and threaten it with various terrorist acts from time to time. Consequently, we have Headleys, Ranas and Zazis (arrested in Denver), and there may be more we do not know about.

An uninterrupted dialogue with Pakistan is essential. But undertaking it at this stage will send a wrong message to them both from the Indian and US points of view. To initiate a dialogue when the Pakistanis are laughing at India and the US that they are able to get away with the terrorist murder without getting anybody even legally proceeded against seriously will be counterproductive.

Two steps are essential before any dialogue can be considered. We should wait till the Indian investigation of the Headley-Rana case is completed. Secondly, Pakistan should demonstrate seriousness in respect of its commitment to disrupt and dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and defeat the jihadis. That includes the 26/11 trial and action against Hafiz Saeed.

Pakistani Army officers are of the view they have been able to outsmart not only Indians but the Americans as well. They got their nuclear weapon, billions dollars producing “mixed results” in Mr Obama’s words, have sustained their jihadi organisations and have not been punished though Pakistanis shot CIA men in 1993, tried to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993, sent money to the lead hijacker of 9/11 and Pakistani Khalid Sheikh Mohammed plotted the operation.

They gave asylum and sustained Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and allowed the Afghan Taliban to regroup and use their territory as safe haven. Yet they received massive aid from the US during this time. Let not the Pakistanis continue to feel that they can outsmart the US and India by getting the dialogue started without fulfilling their commitments.

MIDDLE

The inauguration
by Dr Anjali Mehta

A new piece of equipment had been bought at the hospital which had to be “inaugurated”. Unlike other instruments which had been bought and used without much fuss or preamble (and discovered accidentally by the intended users. Typically, a doctor would say. “hey the table looks cluttered today!” and someone would point out “That’s because these new lenses are lying on it”) this was different. A well-known public figure had funded the purchase and his generosity had to be highlighted. This would ensure that this was not the only cheque of its kind !

The site chosen for the inauguration was the block room just outside the main operation theatre where anaesthetic injections are given prior to surgery.

The chief guest had arrived and the entourage was going around the hospital. It was suggested that I start giving the anaesthetic injections in the block room. I reckoned that were the chief guest to come into the room just then and I were seen lurking in the background with hypodermic needles instead of flowers, there was a fair chance that the security guards might arrest me. I refused, deciding to give the blocks inside the theatre instead.

Accordingly, I changed into OT gear but soon encountered a problem. They had taken the old machines’ metal stand to place the “to be inaugurated” machine on so we had no stand on which to place our old machine and start the surgeries. I suggested to sister that we shift the machine with its decorations ( ribbon et al ) onto a more dispensable table.

Easy enough; the machine was not very heavy. The only problem was that if the chief guest entered the room right when we had lifted the machine off its original table, it could prove awkward. The stand was covered with a flower-decked tablecloth (on which sat the gleaming new machine), the other table was bare. So we could be in an odd situation where the decorations were on the stand and the machine on the other bare table (if we did not have sufficient time to deck up the other table).

The worst case scenario was if the machine was in sister’s and my arms and we had one bare table and one decorated stand on either side of us. I decided that were we indeed caught in the act, we would nonchalantly pretend that it was meant to be that way…they could just cut the ribbon while sister and me were holding the machine. The only drawback being that this large scissor would be precariously close to our fingers which were in front near the bow of the ribbon.

I quickly summarised for sister the story about the legendary William Tell of Switzerland and how his son stood with the apple on his head while Tell fired the arrow. I inspired her to prove that we had the kid’s bravery hiding in our hearts and this was the time to exhibit it.

As things transpired, we were able to place the decorated tablecloth on the new table and the machine on it without being interrupted.

We then briskly got down to work and thus our new equipment came into being.

OPED

Crime and punishment
There is too much law and too little justice
by B.G. Verghese

It is strange and worrying that so many people in India appear to believe that punishment should not fit the crime. Manu Sharma, now serving a life sentence in Tihar jail for murdering Jessica Lall in 1999, was granted parole for a month in September and then for another month on the ground that he needed to observe his grandmother's death anniversary, visit his sick mother in Chandigarh and there attend to the family business.

He voluntarily returned to Tihar a few days ago after a hue and cry about his parole in the first place and his conduct while out of prison – such as pub crawling.

The modalities for granting parole are said to have been correctly observed under law. The grounds, however, do not appear to have been properly checked, as the death anniversary was antecedent and Sharma's mother was not ill.

The parole procedure followed in this case is now being probed. But even granting the reformative aspect of imprisonment and the efforts commendably prescribed to reclaim criminals, should parole for heinous crime be granted as easily as it is in India and should preference be given to people with wealth and connections while lesser breeds have none to speak for them?

A grandmother's death anniversary and attending to the family business appear trivial grounds for parole. So perhaps are weddings. And if prisoners are ill, should they be permitted to choose their hospitals and enjoy what for many would appear to be a holiday under five-star medical care?

Now Madhu Koda, the former Jharkhand chief minister currently under investigation for fraud, has complained that he is being framed and will "reveal all" at the right time. What could be a better time than now?

The Reddy brothers. who are allegedly part of the notorious Bellary iron ore mining mafia, have just succeeded in blackmailing Yeddyurappa, the Andhra chief minister, into reshuffling his ministry and certain civil servants in order to avert a party split that might have cost him his majority. If the BJP succumbed to this pressure, the Congress and others have done so too. Criminals rule.

As disgraceful was the hooliganism displayed by MNS MLAs in the newly-convened Maharashtra Assembly when they violently objected to a Samajwadi Party member Abu Azmi, taking his oath in Hindi.

This, because their boss, Raj Thackeray had ordained that oaths must be taken only in Marathi as a matter of Marathi pride. There was pandemonium as Azmi was assaulted and furniture scattered.

The Speaker suspended the four errant MNS members from the House for four years, a punishment that the MNS claims is too harsh as its Members meant no disrespect to the House!

The suspension should not be revoked or commuted, nor should the four errant MLAs be allowed to come to the Assembly, sign the attendance register and claim their salary or allowances. This sort of misbehaviour is becoming endemic as it goes unpunished or is too lightly punished.

The oath may be taken in any of the country's 22 Scheduled languages and Hindi is the national language. What does the oath state: "I… do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm,,,.. that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established ….". So if the Constitution is violated at the very threshold, what remains?

In the instant case, the malaise stems from the rabid threats that have emanated from Raj Thackeray, in the manner of his uncle, Bal Thackeray, about reserving jobs in the state for Maharashtrians and mandating that all "outsiders" shall speak Marathi or face dire consequences.

"Outsiders" have contributed greatly to Mumbai and Maharashtras' prosperity and do so even today.

Thackeray has been at this game of rabble rousing for quite some time and has warned that Mumbai will burn if he is touched. The government has sadly treated such open incitement and defiance with extraordinary pusillanimity.

Maharashtra is not the only state that has been cowed down by thugs and bullies, which has only whetted their appetite for mischief and encouraged others to follow suit. This must end.

Punishment must be swift and condign and if public property is destroyed, the party must be made to pay, if necessary by selling off personal property of the ring-leaders and other guilty elements. This will end impunity and immunity.

Finally, there was the sad case of agitating lawyers manhandling the Karnataka Chief Justice, Mr Dinakaran, as he has been charged with accumulating wealth through improper means. It is for this reason that his name was not further processed after much protest when put up for promotion to the Supreme Court bench.

Peaceful agitation is one thing. But creating disorder in the Chief Justice's court room and manhandling him is an assault on the judicial process and constitutes unacceptable behaviour. The outrage committed has been widely condemned. But is that sufficient? What next?

All around us we see an erosion or outright collapse of civility and democratic conduct, sometimes by those who are extremely privileged or are supposedly the guardians of the system. The rot cannot be allowed to spread, else it will destroy us all. One of the critical issues we face is perhaps too much law and too little justice.

New time zone for North-East
by Sanjoy Hazarika

As the sun rises in the North-East, much of India sleeps.  To paraphrase Jawaharlal Nehru’s memorable moving remarks when the sun set on the British Empire in 1947: “At the stroke of midnight when the world sleeps, India awakes to life and freedom.”  Indeed, as the early morning light washes across the North-east of India, darkness prevails over the rest of the country.

As a result, for 62 years, instead of following the natural cycle and that of the sun, India and its eastern periphery have been trapped in a time zone that makes neither common sense nor social and economic sense. 

The latest reports of the region lagging behind the rest of the country by as much as 35-to-5 percent are a grim reminder of the fact that power brokers and politicians, bureaucrats and the national security lobby have made an unmitigated mess of conditions in the region for all these years.

Let me elaborate: I am not jumping on the bandwagon of everyone from or in the NE who blames the Centre for everything that is wrong in the region.  This is a very simple and practical issue that lies at the foundation of how we measure our days, our productivity and the structure of our lives. I shall argue here that the IST paradigm is harmful not just for the NER but for all of India which should at the least, have three time zones.

Now, according to the way international time zones are calculated, four minutes is the what a degree of Longitude measures in actual time. That means that we are looking at 31.7 degrees multiplied by 4 = 126.8 minutes, which gives us the figure in the previous paragraph.

These are not just statistics that one is pulling out of a hat: it is based on solid research and work done by a team led by the noted film director and thinker from Assam, Jahnu Barua.  Jahnu’s point again is
simple: a huge amount of potential productive time in wasted in the region, waiting for offices (government and private) to open, schools and other educational institutions to start functioning. In some cases, as much as six hours daylight has passed before the doors of the secretariat of government open.

That’s in summer.  In winter, it’s the other way around: because the sun sets early, darkness rushes across the landscape while Delhi, Mumbai and other cities are still lit by the sun. So, in many cases, those working in offices in Nagaland and Manipur – if they stay in office that long (government offices, barring exceptions, are not known either for competence or discipline: many staff members come late and leave early) – end up completing their last hours of duty in darkness.

There will be many in different establishments who will decry the suggestion and argument for a new Time Zone, for the North-east and other parts of India. But for those who do so, we have questions:

• Have the Time Zones in Russia and the United States been an impediment or advantage for economic progress, not to speak of security and governance? (Thus, if a Jet Airways flight leaves from Delhi at say 10 am and arrives in Guwahati at 10:24 am instead of 1250 hrs, surely it would improve business and travel: a businessman, official or any other person can actually move easily between the region, using time to the maximum)

lWhy is it that the biggest zones of economic growth are in the West, North and South which work in a time zone that is suited to them

lRationally, then, why is it that the poorest zones of growth are in the East and North-east (Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal and the North East?

lThink of the hours of energy time that are used (and misused) in homes, government and other offices that could be saved: Jahnu has calculated that over the past 40 years alone, some Rs. 43,800 crores in the NE has gone down the drain thanks to this irrational time structure.

lYet, the Government of India has in the past two decades set aside, according to one figure, not less than Rs. 120,000 crore for the region!

Of course, practical changes would need to be made – to schedules and timings of institutions and government, apart from readjusting the body clock and insisting on greater discipline.  But if the latest reports of the niggardly progress of the Northeastern states if anything to go by, it should serve as a wake up to governments and those out of it, to start designing the productivity cycle in the NE and other parts of the country in a rational manner.

It is not as if a special time zone did not exist in the region: it did, even under the British. Today there is still Tea Time, which is an hour ahead of the rest of IST. That time was also used by Oil India Ltd until the 1970s and the arrival of a major public sector behemoth in the oil and gas sector. Efficiency and productivity have since plunged in that sector in the region.

For those who cavil from the security point of view – four to six hours of extra daylight means greater scope for improved operations. In addition, daylight saving, which is what we are advocating in essence, can certainly not present a threat to the idea or integrity of India: it would only strengthen it! I am sure that even the wise men in the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council would agree.

The morning hours are the critical time of life and the day: for to those concerned with the root issues of insurgency and conflict, which lie in the failure of the State to understand political concerns and governance (unemployment, lack of basic services, lack of minimum needs) it represents a major robust challenge.

Extra (North-east) time means that young minds would need to be filled with ideas, empty hands with work and empty stomachs with food.  For no reason is there an adage that an empty mind is the devil’s workshop.  There has been enough of messiness and harm caused by ideas espousing violence and conflict, where the young and poor suffer the most, not those who call for the fight – either the State or non-State actors.

The writer is a specialist on the North-east 

Can we really control the weather?
by Tom Choularton

Recently both Russia and China have claimed to be able to use cloud seeding to increase rainfall and snowfall, or change the location of where it falls. In the past, snow-making experiments have been carried out in North American ski resorts in the past with little evidence of success. So how have the Russian and Chinese scientists achieved this feat and what evidence is there that it is in fact due to cloud seeding?

The seeding method used is to add tiny particles of silver iodide to the clouds and there is solid science behind this method. At temperatures a few degrees below zero degrees centigrade, clouds consist mainly of supercooled water droplets.

These clouds can be quite stable, but silver iodide has an ice-like structure and it will cause a few of these water droplets to freeze. Once you have ice particles mixed in with the supercooled droplets, these crystals grow rapidly to form snowflakes, causing the cloud to precipitate. The effect is that the water is released from the cloud.

This form of cloud seeding is not new - It has been used since the 1960s in the western USA to try to make rain, as well as being used in Israel in the past. The difficulty is it has always been hard to prove whether the cloud would have rained naturally if it hadn’t been seeded. Even tests where seeding lots of clouds takes place and un-seeded clouds are used as controls haven’t produce statistically significant results. Therefore, if it works at all it can’t be hugely effective.

So although the underlying science behind the technique seems to be sound, what is presently wrong with the technique?

We at Manchester University have been flying the UK atmospheric research aircraft in clouds that may or may not produce rain or snow, to investigate effective conditions for cloud seeding in different environments. Last winter, we were flying in low clouds with temperatures just below freezing and we did not manage to seed any of the clouds and they were left entirely natural. We found that on many occasions these clouds already contained a mixture of supercooled water droplets and ice crystals, and the ice crystals were growing and falling out as snow. However this wasn’t on account of our seeding efforts.

Interestingly, the origin of these ice particles seemed to be due to freezing caused by particles of dust, ash and organic material carried up into the cloud (some of which can be attributed to pollution). We found that once some ice is formed there is a powerful secondary ice particle production process which occurs at about minus six degrees Celsius. This produces lots of ice crystals, meaning that even if the clouds had been seeded with silver iodide, it would have had little effect. Snow was being produced very effectively and quite naturally anyway.

Interestingly, when we flew higher into clouds, well above the ground and away from a lot of the particulate material, we did find clouds at colder temperatures, as cold as -30C that were made up entirely of supercooled water droplets so maybe seeding these would have had an impact.

So does cloud seeding work? Well our studies indicate that in many clouds that produce lots of snow it does not seem to, because there is plently of natural ice already. However, I don’t completely dismiss it as a method – I do believe it’s possible it can be effective in some clouds in the right conditions and at the right temperature. Nevertheless, I feel some of the stronger claims made recently need further verification, before we herald this as a breakthrough in scientists’ ability to manipulate natural weather cycles.

— By arrangement with The Independent