Slowly Breaking Through the Daylight

It's a sunny day today. It almost feels like a summer's day in good, ole California but I won't go that far. Normally, it would seem like any other day in April or May, but the problem is that it's actually July 1st. The monsoon was supposed to come in about a month ago. Personally, I'm happy. I hate rain. It's depressing and makes things seem worse than they are. But going down to the village, you can see the despair on the farmer's faces who depend on the rain for their crops. The fields are sowed and ready to go. Sadly, though, the rains aren't only affecting the farmers and their pockets. The inevitability of a food shortage exists as well as an electricity and water shortage. In a country where all of these resources are already lacking, the effects will be disastrous. The Indian government hopes to change that with what else but technology, a method called cloud seeding. Spray the clouds with chemicals! The Government of India has provided funding to get the project underway and help bring rain to drought-prone areas.

As someone who is generally (but not strictly) against tilting the natural balance of things, I'm a bit ambivalent. I feel the pain of the farmers, as it is palpable while walking through Pabal village, but if nature happens to be late, then why mess with that? There is undoubtedly going to be water wars as nations start using the technology to help their own people (it's already done in a bunch of different countries). The environmental effects have yet to be understood but how environmentally friendly do you think spraying chemicals in clouds could be? This does not bode well.