One of the most rewarding and respected career options in India is that of a Godman.  Feared, respected and revered for the most part,  they make or break public opinions, amass wealth and affect electoral outcomes.  If politicians are kings, Godmen are often kingmakers.  Most Godmen are little more than conjurers and street magicians, but a few are gifted with the art of really slick speech-making, and these are the ones who rise to occupy the upper echelons of super-powerful Godmen.  While Sri Sri Ravishankar uses witticisms and an effeminate voice to mesmerize people,  those like the Late Sai Baba of Puttaparthi used parlor magic and sleight of the hand to gain attention and earn gratitude and respect of followers.  How?  The Baba would 'materialize' holy ash for the benefit of poor devotees and gold ornaments and diamond jewelry to gain the trust and support of the richer devotees!  Wow.  Wasn't that an expensive proposition? Nope. Those were investments;  Baba would gift a really rich devotee a gold ring worth a few thousands and then, on a later date, after the unsuspecting devotee had become sufficiently enamored and overwhelmed with his gifts, he'd drop a casual hint about something he needed: a building, funds or in one famously documented story, a jeep-chariot! The rich devotee would do everything in his power to see to it that Baba's wishes were fulfilled.  Baba Ramdev appealed to the fitness conscious with his yoga and Asaram Bapu was wonderful at spotting and latching onto unsuspecting,poorly educated but rich victims… Each Godman has a different modus-operandi but they all share one thing in common: power.

The latest in the long line of Godmen tales from India is that of a Shobhan Sarkar who apparently saw 'visions' of a thousand tons of buried gold in a rural town in Uttarpradesh, India.  This seer managed to convince an influential minister about his powers and visions and the minister moved government machinery to get the Geological Survey of India (GSI) to actually instruct the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to proceed on a wild-goose chase.  For the record, the intentions and actions of the ASI seem to be fairly straight-forward: they are looking for buried metallic components, based on the directions of the GSI, but everything and everybody higher in the chain of command than ASI don't seem to particularly want any responsibility, at least not yet.  To add to the drama,  the seer who set all this in motion has given a press statement saying that he's willing to be imprisoned, if the gold is not found!  This seer is really in a total win-win situation:  If even a moderate treasure is found,  he is going to get so much free publicity that he can spend the rest of his life in total opulence.  He'll probably have to hire people to protect him from people who want to throw themselves and their money at him! If there is no gold? The people who ordered this excavation will be the ones under fire and the Godman will be totally forgotten in a little while.  He'll probably even blame ASI for not looking in the right place or on the position of some celestial body which caused the treasure to vaporize; It doesn't matter what he says: the kind of people who get in lines to get 'darshans' (glimpses) of Godmen will swallow any story, no matter how implausible.