Aankhor is a messenger of the seasons, believe the residents of Bhandra, a tribal village in Khunti district of Jharkhand. So, their hopes dimmed when the aankhor tree failed to flower this year. “Its branches are usually covered in blossoms by March, and by April or May the fruits begin to appear. No one eats the fruit, but village elders keep a close eye on it,” says Renu Tuti, a resident. For generations, people in the village have believed that a heavy fruiting of the aankhor (Alangium salvifolium) heralds a good monsoon. This year, as the branches remained bare, many took it as a warning of poor rains. Some farmers also chose not to sow paddy and instead opted for less water-intensive crops such as madwa (finger millet), says Tuti. Their fears have so far proved well-founded. Rainfall remained sparse until mid-July.
To outsiders, the link between the aankhor tree and the monsoon may sound like folklore or mere superstition. For the Munda indigenous community that inhabit Bhandra, however, it is part of a broader body of ecological knowledge built over centuries of close observation. One of the Indian subcontinent’s oldest indigenous communities, the Munda people have long relied on this knowledge, preserved through oral traditions, to read seasonal patterns, manage land and understand local biodiversity. It still shapes their decisions about when to sow, which crops to plant, how to care for livestock and how to manage water resources. Tuti, a field worker with non-profit Child In Need Institute, has seen examples of this firsthand. She recalls her father and grandfather saying that an abundant mango harvest foretold a monsoon marked by lightning, thunder and hail.
“This year we had a bumper mango crop, and the monsoon has indeed brought sudden thunderstorms and hail,” she says. Such observations have also convinced many residents that the climate is changing. “The elders say it always rained on Akshaya Tritiya, which falls in the tentative months of April or May. And farmers would begin sowing on that day,” says Tuti. “But for the past few years, there has been no rain during the festival. Some farmers now delay sowing to adapt to this shifting monsoon.”
Long before satellites, meteorological models and groundwater-monitoring systems, communities learnt to read subtle changes in plants, animals, soils and the seasons to guide their farming and livestock practices. Through centuries of close observation, they developed systems of ecological knowledge to anticipate droughts, floods, pest outbreaks and other environmental disruptions, explains Kushagra Rajendra, who heads the environmental and sustainability domain at Amity University, Haryana. What is striking about these traditions, he says, is they rarely relied on a single sign. Farmers and forest communities interpreted the behaviour of plants alongside fluctuations in groundwater, bird migration, insect activity, wind patterns and the timing of seasonal events. Together, these observations formed a decentralised system of environmental monitoring, refined over generations.
There is now a growing effort to document indigenous knowledge and validate it against scientifically gathered data such as modern meteorology records
Such knowledge is not infallible, but it reflects a sophisticated understanding that environmental change often first reveals itself through subtle biological signals. Plants, for instance, are among the sensitive responders to shifts in groundwater, soil moisture, temperature and seasonal timing. Changes in flowering and fruiting can therefore provide early indications of environmental stress, often before its effects become apparent to people, adds Devina Krishna, a linguist with Patna Women’s College, Bihar.
In a warming world, where extreme and unpredictable weather events are becoming more common, the scientific community finds greater value in this time-tested knowledge —particularly for forecasting slow-onset disasters such as droughts and developing adaptation strategies that require hyperlocal solutions. There is now a growing effort to document such indigenous knowledge and validate it against scientifically gathered data such as modern meteorology records.
One such attempt comes from Ethiopia. Researchers compared drought records from Oromia state with the remembered forecasts of the indigenous Gujii community over 23 years, from 1994 to 2016. In 14 of those years, the community’s forecasts matched the meteorological data. The findings were published in Pastoralism in 2022. The Gujii rely on several indicators, the most sophisticated of which is based on astronomy. On the first day of the spring month Bitdotteessa, which falls in April, Ayyantuu, the community astrologers, observe the position of Lamii, a binary-star constellation. If it appears below the moon in the southeast, the forthcoming short dry season is expected to last longer than usual. From August to October, the Ayyantuu repeatsthe exercise, this time tracking Basaa, a seven-star constellation. If Basaa appears slightly above the moon in the southwest, the dry season is likely to persist. If, within a month, it shifts to the same position below the moon, the likelihood of drought rises. Such forecasts matter because the communities in Oromia, renowned for its high-quality coffee, depend heavily on the timing of the rains. Even modest shifts ...
This article is part of the cover story "Ancient signals", originally published in the August 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth