Despite inputs from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) that clouds on October 28 in Delhi would be insufficient to coax artificial rain, researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur went ahead with their plan of flying their Cessna-plane and firing 10 kg of a concoction of silver iodide, common salt and rock salt into the clouds to tear them. Twice. And failed both times.

That Tuesday — with Delhi’s air quality predictably ‘poor’ — it was the first time the capital had experimented with cloud-seeding since 1972 and for the first time ever, with the express plan of improving air quality.

“We shared information with them (IIT-Kanpur) on the cloud situation but didn’t give any specific input on whether they should go ahead with cloud seeding,” a senior scientist with the Ministry of Earth Science (MoES) told The Hindu. ”We didn’t give any advice because the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, has conducted several cloud seeding experiments over the years and there is still no concrete evidence that this works reliably. We didn’t give any recommendation but shared our input regarding clouds, which was that there were no clouds.”

M. Mohapatra, Director-General, IMD, confirmed to The Hindu that cloud inputs were “shared,” underlining however that this information was generic. “The information on clouding and humidity is available to anyone,” he clarified.

Manindra Agrawal, Director, IIT-Kanpur, and the public-facing official of the institute’s programme, said that while his team had interacted with “IITM and IMD” previously, their feedback had been “negative” and