SCANTY MONSOON rains have prompted the authorities in India’s southern state Karnataka to allocate a large sum of money to appease the rain gods instead of spending it on desperately needed anti-drought measures.
Karnataka’s Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has allocated 170 million rupees (€2.6 million) to organise special prayers in each of the state’s 34,000 temples to invoke the rain gods.
This is Karnataka’s worst drought in 42 years, with 150 of its 176 subdivisions severely affected by a weak monsoon that lasts from early June to mid-September and is the lifeline for the region and its people.
State officials said crops had rotted in the dry spell, groundwater was seriously depleted, drinking water was being supplied by tankers and thousands of desperate and hungry folk were migrating to other, similarly parched provinces for survival.
“I have done nothing wrong [in allocating money for prayers as we need the intervention of the Almighty at times likes these,” newly appointed minister for religious endowments Kota Srinivasa Poojary said in the state capital Bangalore at the weekend.
He was responding to widespread criticism from the opposition.
The BJP government plans on holding prayers on two days that are ‘auspicious’ according to the Hindu calendar: July 27th and August 2nd and will allocate funds to the 34,000 temples across the state to conduct elaborate ceremonies by Brahmin priests.
