For the past four days, at 6 am and 10 pm, nine-inch long chemical candles are lit atop the offices or quarters of the state agriculture department in Rajkot, Jamnagar, Amreli, Banaskantha, and Kutch districts.

The department hopes that the silver iodide vapour that rises from the candles will reach the clouds, induce condensation and bring rain to the dry Saurashtra region. Dark, heavy clouds hover over the region but there's no rain. Cloud seeding, the agriculture department thinks, will bring the rain the region needs badly.

But seeding is usually done by scattering silver iodide crystals on clouds from an aircraft. And all clouds cannot be seeded to produce rain. Seeding will bring rain only if the cloudscontain a certain percentage of water vapour and are of a certain density. So experts who go up have to choose which clouds to seed.

The agriculture department, however, is making do with its candles and the hope that the silver iodide vapour will ascend into the right clouds and bring down rain. Each candle contains about 80 gms of silver iodide. That is the active ingredient. The other ingredients going into the candle are camphor, incense, and such other pooja material. The expense: about Rs 2,000 per day in each district. The department has earmarked Rs 4 lakh for the experiment.

Does the department think the experiment will succeed? Says its deputy director (extension) for Rajkot district, M V Vasoya, ``The vapour from these candles will take three to four hours to rise about 8 km into the sky, where the clouds are present. It is expected to increase the density of the small water droplets present in the clouds and result in rain.''

And does he believe what goes against common sense?``Definitely. If such candles are lit at an interval of every 10 km in the district, it will result in a lot of rain.''

But that belief isn't shared by scientists. Says R K Bakliwal, Director of the Indian Meteorological Department, Ahmedabad, ``I don't think it's possible. And I'm not sure if such an effort has ever been successful. Actually silver iodide can help in condensation of clouds by forming nuclei for smaller droplets to condense around, causing rain. But it's hard to accept that this can be made to happen by lighting silver iodide candles on the ground.''

And Prof K N Iyer of Saurashtra University's physics department says, ``This is a very unscientific and unconventional method of creating artificial rain. Vapour from 10 candles cannot be expected to reach 8 km into the sky, form nucleation and cause rain...You need to inject chemicals by aircraft for creating successful artificial rain.''

Meteorologists pooh-poohed the experiment, saying that even the scattered showers in the region onThursday and Friday had in fact been predicted by them. Therefore, they say, the rain could not have been because of the candles.

Even the man on the street refuses to buy the department's logic. ``Such a vast sky and by lighting just 10 candles daily they expect to bring rain?'' says Sodabhai of Rajkot.

But State Agriculture Minister Behcharbhai Bhadani still thinks his department is on the right track. He says, ``I'm not sure whether the experiment has been successful or not, for the rain could have been natural. I won't claim anything till we test the samples of rain water we have taken.''

And so the experiment goes on. In Rajkot, at the government quarters near the district collectorate, in Jamnagar atop the multi-storeyed Bahumali Bhavan and in the taller government buildings of other districts in Saurashtra, the candles continue to be lit.