SHAKUNTALA Shitole saw the plane with the red glow hovering around the clouds over her village of Roti, 25 kms from Baramati. ‘‘The plane let out some kind of smoke and 10 minutes later, it rained a little,’’ says Shitole.

Now dependent on the government’s food-for-work scheme, Shitole has not been able to sow jowar in her field for the fourth consecutive year. She no longer disbelieves the villagers who said they had read about the plane causing rain to fall from clouds. She only wishes it had rained harder.

That’s the common wish of villagers across Maharashtra’s 73 drought-hit talukas in seven districts, the target to be covered by Project Varsha, the state government’s ambitious Rs 5.4 crore project aimed at augmenting rainfall through cloud seeding of the retreating monsoon.

The US-based Weather Modification Inc WMI, along with their Indian representatives Agni Aviation Consultants, are carrying out the project till November 30. The first such project to be undertaken by the state, it was launched on an experimental basis on September 20 with a cloud seeding plane that had state finance minister Jayant Patil on board.

The success of the inaugural flight — the seeding resulted in 11 mm of rain over Waduj in Satara — raised expectations. In the days after the launch, the control room at Vidya Pratishthan’s college of engineering, Baramati got 50 phone calls per day from farmers, political leaders and even district collectors. ‘‘Most callers said they had sighted dark clouds and asked if the plane could be sent there right away,’’ says DA Patil, assistant engineer, Project Varsha.

Members of a Nagpur-based farmers’ co-operative, farmers from Haryana, curious villagers, schoolchildren have all made trips to gawk at the radar. ‘‘I heard that it was to rain on October 10, so I got the farm ready to sow jowar. I saw a small plane in the sky but it did not rain here,’’ says a disheartened Appasaheb Lonkar.

The experiment has evoked mixed reactions. In Daund, where project officials claim cloud-seeding caused 6.7 mm rain on October 6, A B Shaikh, a clerk in the irrigation department, says, ‘‘The plane left a trail of smoke over some clouds here. It rained some 10 minutes later, the drops were bigger than usual but it was thin and scattered.’’

At Patas, though, where a figure of 9.8 mm of rain was recorded in the irrigation department’s rain gauge on October 6, farmer Pandurang Pasalkar claims it was natural rain, not artificial.

A radar at the Vidya Pratishthan engineering college in Baramati tracks potential rain-bearing clouds. Meteorologists convey the exact location of the cloud to be seeded to pilots of the Piper Cheyenne based either in Baramati or in Pune airports. An hour later, after air traffic control has cleared the plane, it proceeds to seed the cloud. The cloud seeding material used depends on the temperature: In cold areas, it is silver iodide, in warm places, hydroscopic salts come into play. To seed from the top, ejectable flares are released directly into the cloud; to seed from the bottom, the aircraft releases the seeding agent into an updraft using burn-in-place flares.

Even as the drought-affected talukas are covered gradually, there have been hiccups. The plane borrowed from a similar project in Andhra Pradesh, for one, was recalled and then sent back for repairs. But the project has captured the popular imagination.

If Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said that the state government would spend Rs 12 crore on artificial rain, and even buy its own radar and aeroplane, at less exalted levels, artificial rain is the talking point.

‘‘The farmers come to read the papers for news of where the seeding will be done next. This should become a yearly affair. The project should have started earlier in the year. When we did have clouds, the plane was under repairs and when it came back there were no clouds,’’ says Narayan Shitole, a farmer in Roti.

Some like Vilas Phalke, a technician in a sugar factory in Patas, see the cloud seeding experiment as a political gimmick. ‘‘It seems to rain heavily only in Baramati,’’ he says. At Loni-Bhapkar, near Baramati, where 6 mm of artificial rain has been recorded, the villagers in the barren fields are disbelieving. ‘‘It did not rain here — all these are gimmicks in an election year,’’ says Ramchandra Kadale.

Schoolgirl Vaishali Jagtap, however, is more hopeful. ‘‘Yes, I think the plane will bring more rain,’’ says this schoolgirl from Roti who had the time of her life getting drenched in the rain.