A priest prays on the parched Usmansagar lake in Hyderabad. (Reuters file picture)

Hyderabad, July 20: The rain gods have looked away for four years. Now, Andhra Pradesh is trying all it can — be it prayer, persuasion or even an attempt at playing god — to bring the showers home.

First off the blocks was divine appeasement. The government, with the Sharada Peetham of Visakhapatnam, conducted a seven-day “Varun yagna” to please the rain god.

The continuous chanting of shlokas by priests standing in waist-deep water at Visakhapatnam, Chittoor, Vijayawada and Hyderabad ended this evening.

The ritual is believed to have cost a whopping Rs 50 lakh, a bill that will be footed by the common good fund of the Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam.

While waiting to be heard in the heavens, Hyderabad has opened a political front in the battle against drought. It plans to take a delegation to Delhi to persuade Congress bosses to influence Congress-ruled Karnataka to release water from the Almatti reservoir.

Karnataka refused the Telugu Desam; it has turned down the Congress government’s request also.

Chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy is coming under increasing pressure over Bangalore’s refusal.

Yesterday, the Desam-led farmers’ federation held a demonstration on the Prakasham barrage at Vijayawada. Desam leaders argued that there is enough water in the reservoir and it is not being used for either irrigation or power generation.

But members in the Karnataka Assembly say the water is theirs and “how we use it is not our neighbour’s concern”.

As chances of water flowing in from Karnataka reduce to a trickle, YSR is taking matters into hand. In the state of Hi-Tech City, the government is undertaking cloud-seeding.

The attempt to manufacture rain kicks off tomorrow in 10 perennially dry areas of Rayalseema and Telengana under agriculture minister . Raghuveera Reddy. The operation will cost Rs 15 crore.

The agency entrusted with squeezing the clouds is Agni Aviation, which claims success in Karnataka last year.

“We had success in 98 per cent of the places where cloud-seeding was done last year in Karnataka,” said Captain Arvind Sharma, CEO of Agni Aviation.

In the process, clouds with permissible levels of moisture are spotted and strafed with silver iodide and calcium chloride (salt) to attract more moisture and generate raindrops.

“We have been contracted to undertake cloud seeding for 105 days during the rainy season,” said Sharma. The company has set up a radar base — manned by meteorologists — at Nandyal in Kurnool to guide the pilots to juicy clouds.