New Delhi, India – It is that time of year again in the capital of the world’s most populous nation, when 40 million people cough and splutter through toxic pollution for weeks on end.

These days, it is like clockwork. At the onset of every winter, a grey haze hovers over New Delhi and its nearby satellite towns – a toxic mix of exhaust, smoke, and dust that blurs skylines and stings the lungs.

It comes one week after the skies were lit up with firecrackers – which added to the fumes – as people celebrated the annual Hindu festival of light, Diwali. Delhi’s new government, led by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, believes the answer – perhaps now for mitigation, rather than preventing – lies in making it rain, artificially, by “seeding clouds” in order to clear away the fumes.

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