Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Monday (August 10) performed a sacred fire to invoke the blessings of rain God in the background of scanty rainfall impacted by the super El Nino in the present crucial weeks of south west monsoon. The event, called ‘Maha Varuna Yagam‘, was held on the banks of river Krishna near Nagarjunasagar project with 108 Vedic pandits, mostly from the famous Laxminarasimha Swamy temple at Yadagirigutta, conducting day-long rituals that concluded in the evening. It was attended by chief minister A. Revanth Reddy and his cabinet colleagues.The air at a government guest house, where 11 fire pits were dug for the occasion, was filled with chanting of Vedas and smoke from ghee as irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar and his wife Padmavathi, a Congress MLA, performed a prayer ritual before a cow around 4 am. Clad in religious silk clothes, Revanth Reddy and his wife Geeta participated in the final ritual ‘purnahuti‘ around 5 pm.On the eve of the yagam, a statement was issued by the government that highlighted how halfway through the monsoon season, and already into the second week of August, Telangana’s lifeline – rivers Krishna and Godavari – still awaited sustained and widespread inflows.“The spectre of El Nino, the uneven spatial distribution of rainfall so far and uncertainty over the behaviour of the monsoon during its crucial weeks have left Telangana with little room for complacency. More importantly, the state’s water security will depend not merely on how much rain falls within Telangana but on what happens hundreds of kilometres upstream in Maharashtra and Karnataka which contain vast portions of Krishna and Godavari catchment,” it read.“It is against this backdrop – somewhere between emerging hope and continuing hydrological anxiety – that the Chief Minister will participate in a special ‘varuna yagam’ seeking blessings of rain God for abundant and timely rainfall across Telangana as well as upstream catchments of Krishna and Godavari, healthy river flows, replenishment of reservoirs and tanks, groundwater recharge and a prosperous agricultural season,” the government said.True to the apprehensions of the government, the irrigable area of Telangana – which is largely dependent on the rain in Maharashtra and Karnataka – received hardly any water through the canal network of reservoirs in the state. For instance, Alamatti and Narayanpur dams in Karnataka, situated on river Krishna, still have a gap of five thousand million cubic feet (5 tmc ft) to be filled as of now, before water can be discharged downstream into Telangana in larger quantities.In these conditions, the Srisailam reservoir on Krishna and Sriramsagar on Godavari in Telangana have received very little inflows to wet the crop in the state.Telangana chief minister A. Revanth Reddy and his wife perform the final rituals of the day-long Maha Varuna Yagam, on the banks of river Krishna, near Nagarjunasagar project. Photo: By arrangementOn rainfall front within Telangana, the monsoon has played truant which was reflected in extended dry spells raising serious concerns not only of crop cultivation but groundwater depletion and consequent drinking water shortage. There were just one or two instances of heavy downpour in Hyderabad in the last two months amidst fast drying up of borewells.The Telangana Development Planning Society, a state government-run agency to measure rainfalls, has issued a bulletin saying there was a 7% deficit in rainfall against normal on August 11. This is compared to 4% for the same period last year. While the normal for the season was 437.5 millimetres, the actual yield was 407.6 mm.In the parlance of weather forecasting agencies, anything between -22% to +20% of normal rainfall is categorised as ‘normal’. As a result, the 7% deficit this season was termed as “near normal”, a senior official told The Wire.The figures, however, were far from reflecting the ground reality as the weather played hide and seek. There was never any good rain though the skies were cloudy throughout the day. It was under these circumstances, the government constituted a committee under the chairmanship of G. Chinna Reddy, vice-chairman of State Planning Board, to submit its recommendations besides holding seminars and workshops to create awareness among the public.Yagams are ‘anti-science’The latest in the series of steps initiated by the government was the ‘varuna yagam‘ at Vijayapuri near Nagarjunasagar, said to be a flourishing centre of Vedic rituals and learning on the banks of river Krishna several centuries ago. The inscriptions and archaeological evidence at the site testified patronage of Vedic traditions and performance of religious events by Ishvaku rulers. The site also flourished as an international Buddhist centre.However, it invited criticism from science organisations and political parties who termed it a mere diversionary tactic from failure of the government to address the issue. Speaking to The Wire, A. Ramachandraiah, a retired professor of chemistry at the National Institute of Technology, Warangal, and Editor (Publications) of Telangana Akademi of Sciences, said there was no cause and effect relationship between performance of yagam and rainfall. Rains were a natural phenomenon connected with seasonal changes.“In doing a yagam, sandal firewood and ghee became combusted material which reduced oxygen in the atmosphere. It created a cosmogenic environment that produced more carbon dioxide and added to global warming and climate change. Thereby, greenhouse gases were produced,” he argued.Dismissing claims of Vedic priest that the fumes from fire pits produced rains, Ramachandraiah said it lacked scientific validity because the clouds were thousands of kilometres from yagam yards. The fumes diffused within metres. “Clouds do not get condensed to form rain by this kind of fumes,” he said.He also said if the fumes yielded rains, any firewood combustion should also produce rains irrespective of seasonal conditions.A head priest and president of Telangana Archaka Samakhya, Gangu Upendra Sharma, said the chanting of vedas during yagam created clouds. In the same way, the Vedas also had innate power to stop rains if they were in excess. He recalled that he had conducted a yagam in the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government, on instruction by former Chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao, to stop a seven-day deluge that wreaked havoc in the state with floods.The yagam, he said, was like a sermon appealing to Lord Shiva to release Ganga, the river from the skies, that sits on his head.Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, accompanied by Congress leaders, at the foreshore of river Krishna during the State government sponsored Maha Varuna Yagam near Nagarjunasagar on Monday (August 10). To his left is Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and Endowments Minister Konda Surekha. Photo: By arrangementRaja Raja, general secretary of a science group called Jana Vignana Vedika (JVV), said that the government was needlessly thrusting personal faith of leaders in power on the public. The JVV was not against personal faith and belief but it was acceptable as long as it was confined to the lives of individuals. They believe it should not be brought into public domain, especially by governments which swore by constitution to uphold the country as a secular, socialist and sovereign republic which respected all religions equally.“By doing a yagam, you (government) is declaring that its activities follow a particular religious premise,” Raja said, recalling a folklore that staging a play of frogs will result in rains. The yagam was anti-science, which responsible governments must avoid, he said.Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretary John Wesley said the yagam was aimed to mislead the public and an attempt to escape from facing up to the challenge of El Nino.A senior BRS leader and former MP B. Vinod Kumar has said the yagam was a desperate bid by the government to overcome water crisis which was precipitated by its failure to commission pump houses of Kaleswaram project under the pretext of sinking of Medigadda barrage piers.Senior BRS leader and former irrigation minister T. Harish Rao recently slapped legal notices on Telangana Congress president B. Mahesh Kumar Goud and two other Congress leaders – A. Dayakar and S. Rammohan Reddy – following their allegations that Rao had performed a “shudra pooja” to ensure the state did not get rains.