Amid soaring prices, Puja gets underway

NEW DELHI: Durga Puja celebrations kicked-off in earnest even as the organizers faced a lot of hardship this year. With sky-high inflation and the slump in the markets, bringing in sponsors for the pujas was a task in itself. Add to this the heavy expenditure on pandal security in the wake of terror threats and the recent attacks. The organizing committees have been forced to curtail their budgets, evaluating the worth of each penny being spent.
"The market condition is not very good.It needed a lot of coaxing and persuasion to organize funds. Getting new companies was extremely difficult this year,'' says Suman Chatterjee, secretary of Navapalli Puja Samiti in C R Park. It was same at Milani Cultural and Welfare Association in Mayur Vihar. R Barua, general secretary of MCWA says: "The situation has been dismal. Even our regular sponsors have lowered their contributions. We just hope to achieve the previous year's figure of Rs 18 lakh.''
The scale on which the pujas are organized, especially with the number of cultural and social programmes that go along, support from corporate houses becomes indispensable. Debashis Saha, head of the organising committee at Matri Mandir, Safdarjung Enclave, says: "Any event of this magnitude requires tremendous corporate participation. This year, we were very skeptical about getting sponsors, but they did come forward and have done as best as they can given the larger picture of the economy.''
While the double-digit inflation served as a huge blow to organizers, with even some artists charging more for their performance, safety provisions too consumed double the usual allocated amount. As most pandals attract a crowd of over 20,000-30,000, the security has been beefed up everywhere. "When we started out, we had cut down on the budget, however, whatever we had curtailed has been offset by the rising prices of commodities from edible oil, vegetables to even dals. Moreover, security arrangements have taken away a major chunk of our budget,'' says Suman Chatterjee.
The expenditure on `bhog', the afternoon feast, has doubled and even the cost of prasad which is offered to every devotee has increased by around 50%-60%. Anjan Mukherjee, convener of the Shiv Mandir puja in C R Park, says: "Since our puja is based inside the temple, we did not face serious trouble getting sponsors. But, the high costs are certainly affecting the funds. The amount set aside for bhog has gone up to Rs six lakh from last year's Rs three lakh. After the bomb blasts, people's safety has become a priority and therefore, with tightened security and additional assisting technologies, our security costs have doubled, totalling nearly Rs two lakh.