Traditional Groundwater Diviners in India

Traditional Groundwater diviner is the person who claims to have the unique power using which he can find out the site, depth and yield of groundwater for drilling of bore well for good supply water. Poor and uneducated farmers are the main victims of such ground water diviners. In India, still most of the farming is dependant on the monsoon rainfall which is not very reliable source for the farmers who already have very low land holding capacity. In such cases, these farmers are looking forward to irrigate their farms for sustainable income from farming using groundwater resource. These section and also sometimes superstitious educated people in cities becomes victim of these ground water diviners.

The so called techniques which these water diviners use are use of stick or coconuts or copper V-shaped rods etc. They just carry these rods or sticks and coconuts in their hand and travel in the field for few meters. And the method is, because of their divine power the rod or sticks will move or rotate in their hands and that means there is groundwater stream and if you will make drill there you will get plenty of groundwater. Sometimes they get lucky and they get well paid for this exploration and many times it fails too. Some people told me about their funny experiences of these groundwater diviners. Sometimes these diviners in over confidence claim that they will repay all the money in case of failure and when they notice that there prediction is going to be fail, so they ran away during night and will never show their face in that village or region. But still they get plenty victims to earn money. Unfortunately, some of these groundwater diviners get awards from ministers and they use these functions to promote their fake service. None of these groundwater diviners have any scientific explanation of their techniques. And to make such drills for bore wells, sometimes it costs Rs. 15,000-30,000 which is lot of money if you will consider the economical condition of these farmers.

In India, there are already many, so called Baba’s and Guru’s who claim to have cure for diseases like Cancer and AIDS with no background of medical knowledge at all. Such water diviners can be included in the same category.

For such groundwater explorations, Geophysical Survey using the Electrical Resistivity Method is practical and economical scientific method to find out the best site of bore well drilling. This method has a success rate of near about 80%. Unfortunately there are very few people and organizations who can guide scientifically to explore the sites for groundwater in India. The organizations like Central Ground Water Board or Ground water departments of states have also not reached yet to this poor section of farmers in India.