Failure to innovate lands cracker makers in trouble

Kshaunish Sarkar & Monotosh Chakraborty / TNN / Oct 25, 2018, 11:26 IST

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Tuesday’s Supreme Court verdict, allowing only “green” firecrackers with reduced noise and emission levels this Diwali, may have made cracker makers in the fireworks manufacturing hubs of Champahati and Nungi in South 24 Parganas jittery, but little do they realise that it’s their own failure to innovate on green crackers all these years that has landed them in a fix now.

Failure to innovate lands cracker makers in trouble

The decibel limit on firecrackers has almost pushed chocolate bombs and dodomas out of market

KOLKATA: Tuesday’s Supreme Court verdict, allowing only “green” firecrackers with reduced noise and emission levels this Diwali, may have made cracker ma kers in the fireworks manufacturing hubs of Champahati and Nungi in South 24 Parganas jittery, but little do they realise that it’s their own failure to innovate on green crackers all these years that has landed them in a fix now.
More than 800 cracker makers at Champahati and Nungiapparently took it for granted that courts would stick to the more than two decade-old tough stance only on sound crackers. In fact, whatever evolutions they had made in products were driven by court verdicts limiting the decibel limit of crackers to 90.

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“Over the last 30 years, cracker makers have slowly moved away from sound firecrackers and focussed on crackers that generate more light and less sound. This trend got a boost after Calcutta High Court imposed a 90 decibel sound limit on firecrackers in 1996. Since then, chocolate bombs, rocket bombs, ‘dodomas’ and other sound crackers slowly gave way to ‘chorkis’, tubri-like crackers such as power 60, speed 100 and phantom 60 shot, which burst 60 times while creating

a multi-coloured spectacle as they go up, and the jumping frog that can go up as high as 8 feet to 10 feet. Newer varieties of rangmashals have also hit the market,” said Sukdeb Naskar of the Nungi Firecrackers’ Manufacturing Union.
What the likes of Naskar don’t realise is that an evolution from sound to light fireworks is not enough as these new crackers may produce less sound but actually pollute the air much more, making it difficult to breathe. “The soundless or less sound-generating crackers are welcome, but we should also keep in mind the fact that newer versions of rangmashals and tubris are dangerous for the lungs, particularly for the elderly citizens,” said a activist.
Another green activist said cracker makers should start doing what they should have done long ago — make crackers that not only generate less sound but also have less impact on the air we breathe.

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