New Delhi’s political circles are rife with gossip about a former prime minister who was guided daily by a godman, and a former finance minister whose decisions were influenced by astrology (though tempered, it seems, by a former cabinet secretary who passed himself off as an amateur astrologer). The leader of Bihar state’s Rashtriya Janata Dal party, Laloo Prasad Yadav, reportedly filled his swimming pool with mud and garbage because a pandit told him it would stop the “leak” of defecting members.