September 2004 has passed and the Indian Government is still in office. It has survived all storms of a major "planetary shift" caused by "Saturn in the ascent" and defied its horoscope pointing to a catastrophe.

During the last months, a sensational forecast of one of the leading political astrologers created excitement in political circles, especially among the BJP leadership. Lachman Das Madan, 82, who has been guiding the steps of top politicians including several Indian prime ministers, predicted that the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was heading for split and that the subsequent fall of the Indian Government in September was imminent. The drumming gave way to deafening silence: the prediction turned out to be nothing but a grand flop - not the first one in Madan's careeer!.

Watchers of the astrology scene may still remember a unique event in April 1995. It was in Vir Sanghvi's talk-show Question Forum: Madan boasted with his thousands of all-correct predictions and Sanal Edamaruku started to calmly unfold a pack of newspaper clippings and showed them one by one to the rolling TV camera. They documented some of Madan's predictions that history had clearly proven wrong. Before the general elections in May 1991 for example, Madan had predicted: Jyoti Basu will be Prime Minister, following a hung Parliament with Rajiv Gandhi as care-taker PM. Everybody in India knows that this did not happen. But strangely nobody remembered Madan's well publicized wrong prediction, when some weeks later it was Narasimha Rao, who became PM. Astrologers survive on the public's bad memory.

About the 1995 bye-elections, which were just over at that time, Madan had produced even blunders in series: In Bihar, Laloo Prasad will loose. (Reality: Laloo Prasad was re-elected.) In Orissa, Biju Patnaik will remain in power. (Reality: Biju Patnaik lost power and the Congress-party was elected.) In Manipur, President's Rule will be established. (Reality: Congress came to power.) Sanal Edamaruku pinned them one by one. But this was only the beginning of Madan's exposure.

What followed was the "Great Astrology Challenge in Doordarshan". It took two further episodes of Question Forum, during which Sanal Edamaruku put the astrologer's prediction skills to a fool-proof test. Madan failed miserably in front of running cameras and studio audience. The test was quite simple: all the astrologer had to do was answering two questions each about five anonymous people, of whom the rationalists had provided the exact times and places of birth one week in advance. If astrology's claim was correct and the major stages of life as well as the time of death were predestined by planetary positions at the time of birth, Madan should be able to find out whether these five people were male or female, dead or alive, proposed Sanal.

As harmless as this may sound, it unleashed a storm. After he had already agreed during the program, Madan got panic and tried to escape the little test by hook or crook. The state-run channel anticipated a scandal and cancelled the scheduled recording of the next episode. Forced by increasing pressure of the public via hard-hitting articles in The Hindu and other dailies, the recording was rescheduled. Madan used his considerable political influence. Allegedly he got even the Prime Minister's Office interfere on his behalf. At that time, Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister. He was one of Madan's followers, who would not make any move without astrological advice. Finally the public sense for fair play (and of course the public curiosity) prevailed.

The test was done and recorded. Sanal Edamaruku cornered the resistant Madan to give his answers. Madan tried to avoid the yes-or-no facts and made instead some more cloudy statements about the anonymous persons' life. Since all of them were well known public figures and two were even present in the audience, his astrological wisdom could immediately be checked with reality. This was not to Madan's advantage. He saw for example lucky times and great financial success in the life of a politician at a time, the man spent due to Emergency in jail. Under great laughter of the audience, he lauded the happy marriage life of a divorcee and insisted on the physical disability of a person, who was sitting in fine health and condition in the studio.

The test was a triumph for the side of rationalism. Madan was completely defeated and according to the agreed conditions would have been bound to close down his magazine Babaji. Needless to say that he did not stick to the agreement later. The recorded version of the next Question Forum was heavily edited and manipulated before the broadcast, to avoid too much embarrassment for the Prime Minister's astrologer. But what was left, was still more than enough to prove the failure of astrological predictions in front of millions of TV-viewers. He should have been out of business after that. But astrologers survive on the public's short memory.