Tilting At The Windmills

Electoral ballyhoo continues to rake up the row surrounding Asia’s largest wind farm in Satara district. Popular lore has it that the windmills located on a 10,000-acre, 3,000-foot-high plateau in the Sahyadri ranges disperse the rain clouds and are responsible for the four consecutive droughts in the Satara and Sangli districts. This is being leveraged by the BJP-Shiv Sena, which has accused the Shinde government of protecting Congress-ncp politicians and industrialists owning nearly 1,000 windmills. Sena’s Narayan Rane had demanded the closure of the windmills for a year to see whether rainfall improved. Sena MLC Kanhaiyalal Gidwani now claims the cloud diversion has upped rainfall in Konkan by 40 per cent.