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Quaint ways to predict rain
DEEP in the countryside, where newspapers do not reach and met reports are of no consequence, farmers still depend upon the age-old folk wisdom passed over by successive generations in predicting the weather. The indicators would baffle scientific reasoning. These could range from fireflies appearing in the night forest, sparrows bathing in the dust and ants carrying pupae to goats creating a din and refusing food to the flowering of neem and babul trees—all suggesting impending rains. "All across timeless India, those living off the land are turning to ancient portents rather than relying on a government forecasting machinery that invariably fails them," observes Srikant Jha of Patna’s College of Agriculture. "The Cray supercomputers with meteorologists cannot match their accuracy." He points out that long before the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had predicted a drought in Rajasthan, the Bhil tribes of the Thar were already prepared. The khair trees (acacia catechu) had become extra bushy and wild cucumbers sprouted everywhere, thus suggesting that worse was in store. Other indicators of a dry
spell, as followed by village folk elsewhere in India, include crows
cawing during the night, foxes appearing during the daytime and snakes
climbing up trees. But should chameleons climb trees (besides changing
colours to black, white or red), the opposite is indicated —
torrential rain. |
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"After all, what are these indicators?" asks Anil Gupta, a professor at the Centre for Management in Agriculture, Ahmedabad. "These are a recognition of patterns in weather behaviour. Why should the search for patterns not deserve proper scientific scrutiny?" P.R. Kanani of Gujarat Agricultural University is already working on these lines with a grassroots-level body, Ancient Rain-Prediction Network (ARPN), which prepares weather charts targeted at farmers. The "IMD’s predictions for specific regions are inadequate as they hold good for no more than three days and do not help in planning sowing operations," says Kanani, who presented a paper at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last month. For these agro-climatologists, there is another invaluable resource to draw upon — farmers’ panchangs or almanacs, which have been in use since the 4th century BC. Based on folklore, astrology, rituals and ancient literature, the 30-odd panchangs in force across the country are the closest equivalents to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, published in the USA. "Rainfall predictions made in panchangs are on an average, more accurate than those of the government meteorological departments," says Vinay Date, who has been publishing these almanacs for the past 25 years. "Depending on the position of stars and planets, we tell the farmers of Maharashtra when it will rain. Also, we can predict breaks and withdrawal of the monsoon, give or take a couple of days." "I personally believe that predictions in almanacs are based on mathematical models," says Y.L. Nene, former director-general of the International Crop Research Institute (ICRI), Secunderabad. "They are so frequently correct that farmers in India have been believing in them for centuries and still do." Nene suggests that the time has come to marry traditional wisdom with scientific knowledge-possibly with the constitution of "joint research teams" of weather predicting astrologers and qualified agro-climatogolists at key centres, somewhat on the lines of Mosquito Advisories in Canada. Kanani believes that the body of information gathered through ancient methods of weather forecasting cannot be altogether ignored and suggests the launch of a decade-long project to "identify and test old literature and oral traditions" across different climatic zones. "Traditional methods may be riddled with inaccuracies, but we cannot afford to ignore them altogether," says Jha. "Scientists and astrologers must approach the subject with open minds so that we come up with an error-free system of forecasting. This is very crucial for a predominantly agricultural country like India that depends so much on the rains." MF |
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