The astrologers
failed miserably once again. Neither could they make more than 4 correct
predictions, nor could they win the Rs 10 lakh price money offered by
Dr Narendra Nayak.
Pre-election
period is always a busy season for soothsayers and astrologers in our
country. The candidates, their well wishers and anyone else worth their
salt flocks to the soothsayers - to find out their fate, the auspicious
time for the fiIling of nominations and seeking blessings and suggestions
for better results.
The Federation
of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA) headed by Dr Nayak found the
elections the right opportunity to test those people who claim to possess
supernatural powers. They have been challenging the astrologers for
the past several years by inviting their predictions regarding key results
of the elections.
This year
too, they were challenged to forecast the results of the Karnataka Vidhan
Sabha elections and interestingly the results were not different from
the previous years.
The challenge
was to make 25 predictions, that include the name and party of the person
who will become the next chief minister of Karnataka and the number
of votes that some major candidates will poll in some of the important
constituencies.A margin of error of ±10% was allowed in
case of the number of votes, though ranges were not accepted. There
were around 200 entries from all over Karnataka, both from astrologers
and non-astrologers. And finally, the non-astrologers who gave upto
9right answers turned out better predictors than the astrologers who
could manage only upto 4 right answers. Dr. Narendra Nayak points out that most
astrologers were staunch BJP supporters, the reason why they earned
2 to 3 marks. Finally, one Ms Sujatha from Dharwad (9 marks), K R Chandrashekhara
and M L Anand (8 marks each) topped the list, but, failed to win the
prize as they couldn’t answer even 50 percent of the queries. |
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The method
Even interesting
were the methods adopted by the contestants in making the predictions.
Some relied on horoscopes,prayers and insight. One stated that he had
a special method of touching water while asking the questions and water
would give the answers by means of vibrations. Another person who used
a pendulum to make predictions got 4 marks. Yet another person is a
strong believer in star power. One contestant stated that he had prayed
for 2 hours to Allah before writing down the answers. Another contestant
went as far as casting a horoscope of the state of Karnataka All his
predictions were false.
Even non-astrologers
had interesting reasons to predict. A contestant from Mandya had sent
his entry based on his experience in politics as his wife happened to
be a vice chairperson of a village panchayat. However most of them relied
upon the past performance of the parties, candidates and newspaper
reports to frame their predict- ions. Only one of them admits that he
had checked the predictions of the astrologers along with all
the surveys conducted by the media.
Entries
Many contestants
had sent their entries only because of the monetary attraction. Many
of them had either a daughter to marry off or a child with a very serious
illness and had hence enclosed a letter demanding the first prize on
humanitarian basis. But none of them fared well in the business
at hand.
An interesting
entry was in the form of 10 astrological magazines packed together,
signifying that they will provide answer to all the questions. Another
entry was in Tamil. There were a lot of non-serious entries thanks to
some newspapers who publicised the contest as some quiz on elections.
Some even sent entries with the BJP emblem stuck on the cards.
Late claim
A late
entry, actually a claim, came a day after the results were announced.
It was from one Ashok SB from Shimoga claiming that he
did not know about the contest but the predictions he had made
and got published in the daily ‘Navika’ has turned out to
be right and hence he deserves the offered prize money. Though
his answers were right, there were only 5 of the questions answered.
Dr. Nayak observed despite the fact that it was a late entry.
AABHA RAVEENDRAN
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