How India can prevent another wet Republic Day

It is impossible to control or reduce the fury of nature but, at a lower scale, it is worth experimenting to modify it, says Ajay Lele.



On January 26, 2015, soldiers from Indian armed forces and other security agencies demonstrated a fine display of their valour when they weathered the rain and without losing their bearing marched smartly in front of the saluting dais during the celebrations of India’s Republic Day.

Barak Obama, the chief guest at this ceremony, was the first ever US president to witness the parade. During his three-day stay in India, many important deals were finalised in the fields of defence, nuclear and renewable energy indicating that there was a lot of substance associated with his visit.

Rain played a bit of a spoiler for the Republic Day parade, but luckily it was not that heavy to cancel the proceedings.

Imagine the embarrassment India would have had to face if the parade and few other ceremonies were to be cancelled owing to inclement weather conditions.

Even though issues related to weather are beyond anyone’s control and any such disturbances should be taken in one's stride, it is important to note that putting up a two-hour show at Rajpath involves detailed planning and practice for around two months.

Last year, the Government of India had spent Rs 320 crore for the parade.

Now the question to be asked is, should we allow the efforts of thousands of people and more than Rs 300 crore to go waste just because of the rain? Is there no solution to the problem? Is a country that aspires to become a technology powerhouse so helpless? Do other developed States also allow the rain to throw a wet blanket on their efforts?

On October 1, 2009, People's Republic of China celebrated its 60th anniversary. This military parade involved around 10,000 troops and a display of high-tech weaponry.

The weather was expected to play spoilsport at the parade that was to be held at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The major attraction of this parade was the flypast, so it was important to ensure that the clouds would not reach the celebration area.

Chinese agencies launched four ‘attacks’ on the clouds, firing 432 rain dispersal rockets at them. The strategy worked. The extremely gloomy weather over Tiananmen Square improved. In short, China had conducted specific weather modification experiments before the start of the parade to ensure clear skies for the show.

Earlier, too, on August 8, 2008, the day of the Olympics opening ceremony, it was reported that the Chinese weather modification office had ensured that clear weather prevailed over the arena. For this, they reportedly fired over 1,000 rain dispersal rockets.

China is known to have a unit to undertake artificial weather modification experiments and have around 30 specifically-modified aircraft and thousands of special rocket launchers in their inventory for this purpose.

For the last many years countries like Russia have been undertaking weather modification experiments every winter to reduce the level of snowfall.

Weather modification has a long history; the technique is known to have been used even in warfare in the past.

The US agencies reportedly used such techniques to modify the weather for military operations during the Vietnam War.

Cloud seeding was undertaken over Vietnam in the beginning of 1967 to create flash floods to block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The United Nations later evolved the Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD, 1978) to forbid the use of weather modification in warfare.

However, undertaking small-scale weather modification is a ‘just’ activity. Even in India, in some regions, artificial rainfall experiments are conducted routinely.

It is important for India to invest more in this field.

In the last few years, it has been observed that owing to improved numerical weather prediction techniques, the presence of supercomputers with weather agencies and the increased availability of satellite observations have resulted in accurate weather forecasting.

Now, we need to go a step further and evolve a system that could assist in weather modification.

Currently, it is impossible the control or reduce the fury of nature but, at a lower scale, it is worth experimenting.