Fiction: Two Indian institutions are keen to produce silicon, but someone wants to spoil their plans

That fortuitous 1963 meeting in Mettur brought together Ramani and the professors from the Indian Institute of Science. Together, they set out on a mission to make their work on silicon metal a reality.

In the twenty-two years that went by, the two teams, one from Mettur led by Seshamani, and the other from Bangalore led by two junior scientists from the Institute, found the project fun and challenging. Their joint effort had an interesting side to it. During the 1970s, their collaboration was, in fact, unprecedented. In India, scientific research and manufacturing often existed independently of each other. Research projects rarely left the lab and industry continued to import technology for everything.

Despite many challenges, by the end of the decade, the project had developed sufficiently for Mettur Chemicals to apply for a manufacturing licence to produce silicon metal, which could be used in the creation of solar photovoltaic cells – a technology that was supposed to reduce India’s dependence on imported oil. By the early 1980s, the test reactors at Mettur were producing sufficient material for the new company, christened Metkem Silicon, to scale up into production.

But something weird happened.

Metkem’s market analysis had projected the total Indian demand for silicon...

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