Crash The Cloud

The Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy government’s controversial cloud-seeding programme took another blow when the aircraft involved crashed last week. Thankfully, nobody was killed when the Cessna went down in a pond close to Bangalore. The AP government had planned to invest Rs 40 crore in cloud-seeding during the current monsoons to augment rainfall in 10 rain-starved districts. However, precious time has been lost following the crash of the Agni Aviations aircraft, a subsidiary of the US-based Messrs Weather Modification Inc. The firm is now struggling to find a viable alternative. Several experts had earlier raised questioned the firm’s ability to carry out such a large operation. The Opposition, of course, has found another issue to slam the Congress regime.