A fortnight ago, Tamil Nadu had ordered over 33,000 temples owned by the Hindu religious and charitable endowments department to conduct special rituals to appease the rain gods.
Now, the government has changed tack and decided to try out cloud-seeding to bring rain to the parched state.
This is not the first time, though, that Tamil Nadu is toying with cloud-seeding.
Five times earlier, the state has tried it out but with no positive results. In fact, in March 2019, Madras high court had urged the state and central governments to work out a way to make artificial rain.
This year, the delayed monsoon has hit the state, and specially its capital Chennai, very badly. So bad were things before the monsoon arrived that the state government was forced to announce that it would run water trains to bring 10 million litres daily from Jolarpet in Vellore district to Chennai city.
On Wednesday, local administration minister SP Velumani told reporters after a water review meeting in Thoothkudi that a team of experts was exploring the possibility of cloud-seeding. But he did not specify how much money had been allocated for the project.