There is close to Rs 3,000 crore riding on the rains in Mumbai this year. Bookies have accepted bets worth Rs 3,000 crore on the date of the arrival of monsoon in Mumbai, the total rainfall the city will record  this season, and even the monthly break-up of quantum of rainfall.
Efforts to perfect the art of forecasting the Indian monsoon have been on since meteorologist Blandford discovered the connection between snowfall over Eurasia and the Indian summer monsoon rainfall in 1861. Since then India’s prosperity is directly linked to the summer monsoon rainfall.  However, the Mets probably can’t compete with the Indian farmer when it comes to medium and short-range forecasting.
Go to rural India, and you find many strange religious ceremonies and you will find quite a number of occult predictions on the monsoon.. For example in Rajasthan, usually rain-starved, there are communities whose only task is to predict the weather, especially rains.Traditional  means of predicting the monsoon have been in vogue in the Thar for decades. While some communities read the behaviour of nesting birds (higher the nest, better the monsoon) and movement of insects, the most famous among them is the ancient method of ‘Dhani’ performed  by the Ghachi community, whose members are said to be experts at reading the nature’s subtle signs and messages just before the onset of rains. One of their mysterious traditional ceremony involves a ‘yajna’ (sacrificial fire), a bamboo stick exercise and fierce raid on grain stocks. The ritual is performed every year on Akha Teej (the festival in Rajasthan for child marriages) and the process adopted by them is ridiculously simple.Two boys, both below nine, stand in front of each  other with two bamboo sticks, one black and the other red. As the entire community begins a yajna with the chanting of mantras.The sticks are gradually raised over their arms.
Experts from the community watch the movement of the sticks, their friction and the effect of the sticks, and the effect of the heat on the boys to make the predictions. Hundreds of people from the city and adjoining villages come to watch the ceremony.They go back and spread the message among their communities, who make preparations for the monsoon on the basis of the result, so what did they see this year? There are mixed signs. In the areas where it rains, there would be an above average monsoon. But many areas will not receive any rainfall, says Babu Lal (81), who has been witnessing the ritual since childhood. He says that last year there was bad news. One of the boys could not stand the heat and fainted! This had never happened in the past. “This was the sign of a big calamity,” the old man predicted. Sure enough, the Barmer district of Rajasthan in the midst of  Thar desert received so much rain that it got unusually flooded, resulting in many drownings.
Whenever the villagers of Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh get worried, that the rains would be scanty that year, they are busy organising frog weddings to propitiate rain gods. Frogs are dressed up as brides and grooms, and are sprinkled with vermilion.They are then taken to the nearest pond for their honeymoon.The ceremony ends with the villagers chanting prayers and showering flowers into the pond.
Down south, in Chennai, donkeys married in ritual to bring rain! In 2003 as the rain gods failed five pairs of donkeys tied the knot on a Saturday in an elaborate public wedding. Several hundred devotees chanted mantras to bless the donkeys in eternal union in an hour-long ritual following local marriage customs in all respects, save species. In a remote village in south-west Rajasthan, close to the Indo-Pak border lies the village Bhinyad in Barmer district. Farmers here, as in most of India, observe the behaviour of the local insect-bird- and animal-life around them, which along with plants, which give them an excellent indication of the rains to come. Here are some examples:
Location of the nests of the red-wattled lapwing (Vanellus Indicus) can help you judge how much it will rain. If nests are found on the banks of a water body or in the bed of a tank, it will not rain. If the nest is away from the bank and at higher elevation, the rains will be good. When the house sparrow bathes in dry soil, it indicates that it will rain.
If the crow starts laying eggs, it will not rain for the next 60-70 days at least. If the farmer busy in his field spots a spiny-tailed lizard (Uromastix hardwickii) starting to seal its burrow, he is certain that it will rain within the next 24 hours. If a flock of cattle egrets leave their roosts and fly away, it is going to be a poor year for rain. If fresh leaves on the khejri tree (P.Cinceraria) dry up during July and August, rains will follow in the next 48 hours. “If the crow starts cawing at night and the jackal wails in the day, it’s time to forget about farming and seek jobs as labour in the mines,” says Taga Ram, a 72-year old farmer of the village, It will be a drought year.