the pathbreaking innovation of P Ramar, the young south Indian farmer who has developed a process for producing a petroleum-like fuel from water and a few plant leaves ( Down To Earth , Vol 5, No 6), is now a national issue. Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda has been informed, and minister of state for s&t , Y K Alagh and the pm 's technology adviser A P J Abdul Kalam are reportedly very excited.

The Union ministry's department of science and technology (dst) is finally attaching highest priority to get Ramar's invention patented in India and abroad. According to officials, dst will provide full financial and technical support to Ramar to set up a 300-litre-per-day production plant in Rajapalayam, Tamil Nadu, and scale it up to one million litres per day over the next three years. This will be treated as a national project. dst will be sending a group of scientists very soon to Ramar's village to help him develop the technology further. A task force will be formed to monitor the project's progress.

On September 6, Ramar had a long meeting with senior officials of the patent division of the dst . He is believed to have finally revealed the actual components of his experiment. On suggestions that the government can protect the invention through an immediate gazette notification (pending the filing of a proper patent), V S Rama Murthy, secretary, dst, said, "I am quite open to the idea. Let me find out the details.'

Rama Murthy, who got a sample tested for its chemical composition in a laboratory of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, says, "It is now confirmed that the product contains mineral hydrocarbons similar to those found in petroleum.'

On September 2, 1996, Ramar was in Delhi on dst 's invitation "to conduct an experiment under controlled conditions, and document the protocol'. It was conducted successfully three times over a period of two days in the Indian Institute of Technology ( iit) , Delhi, the last time in the presence of V S Raju, iit director, and members of the faculty from the department of chemistry and the c entre for e nergy s tudies, apart from senior dst officials.

In the last experiment, leaves from an unknown herb,