MUMBAI: To appease his devotees these days, it seems,
Lord Ganesha
must go well beyond the brief. Not only must he remove their obstacles and endure their taste in music, but he must also take part in selfie contests and offer free Wi-Fi as bait. A quick look at some of the biggest
pandals
and their budgets this year will show that perhaps 30% of Ganeshotsav is about the deity. The rest is about noise—visual, aural, online, auditory and, above all, commercial. In other words, it’s about
designer mandaps
,
rising footfalls
, increasing sponsorships, prepaid pujas and other blingy offerings.
Inside the four fabric walls that are pretending to be granite temple walls at Andhericha Raja, for instance, the air contains corporate-sponsored, free Wi-Fi. “What Lalbaugcha Raja is to south Mumbai,
Andhericha Raja
is to the suburbs. People spend two to three hours in queue, so this helps them,” says the mandal’s spokesperson Uday Salian, adding that this is their second year of free internet. Besides, as the only mandal where the idol stays on for 15 days, Andhericha Raja has a waiting list of celebrities including actor Jeetendra and director Rohit Shetty who want to sponsor the idol with donations running up to a crore. “Till 2008, we used to choose a sponsor family through lottery but then we had to stop taking requests because of the overwhelming response,” says Salian, adding that their total expenses this year came to around Rs 25 lakh.
Every year, the industry around the festival gets bigger, louder and hungrier. There are said to be roughly 15,000 Ganesh mandals in the city and of these, reportedly at least 6,000 have big idol installations.
Initiated by Bal Gangadhar Tilak during the freedom movement as an event to unite diverse local groups, Ganeshotsav today has become a well-oiled commercial machine inviting contributions in rupees, dollars, euros, sponsorships, paid requests to perform puja, gold, silver and even diamonds. Sometimes, the donations may come from politicians such as former chief minister Narayan Rane who sponsored the idol at Ganesh Galli a few years ago.
Naturally, this rise in scale and costs reflects in the balance sheets of mandals. “The expenditure rises by at least 15% every year,” says Bhujang Pai of King’s Circle’s Gowd Saraswat Brahmin (GSB) Seva Mandal whose 19-ft clay idol costs roughly Rs 1 lakh and the water-proof pandal at a little above Rs 1 crore.
Wadala’s GSB mandal, on the other hand, has spent Rs 1 crore on celebrations this year which not only includes their tradition of mass feeding for 11 days, but also lighting and electricity. “We have lit up the place like it is Diwali,” says N N Pal, spokesperson for the mandal.
Closing ceremonies too demand elaborate budgets. For Lalbaugcha Raja’s immersion this year, a ship-building firm in Gujarat has built a Rs 30-lakh special stage “that would immerse automatically in two-and-a-half minutes,” says Ashok Pawar, committee member of Lalbaugcha Raja Sarvajanik Ganesh Mandal.
With footfalls rising every year, new ideas are born. Naresh Dahibavkar, president of the Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Samanvay Samiti, explains that major mandals outsource security to private agencies that charge an average of Rs 5,000 per guard for 10 days.
King Circle’s GSB mandal, which sees close to six lakh visitors in five days, has fast-tracked the puja system this year by offering prepaid receipts at the entrance. “So, all you have to do is enter your name,” says Pai, who expects a rise in the numb-er of pujas from last year’s 61,000 to 80,000. Also, what helps them in crowd management is their 3,500-strong army of volunteers which includes engineers, bankers, doctors, industrialists and people from abroad, says Pai.
Last year, industry body Assocham pegged India’s annual revenue from Ganeshotsav at Rs 20,000 crore, a major chunk of which comes from Mumbai. Big mandals tend to reserve a perce-ntage of the revenue for social initiatives. Lalbaugcha Raja Sarvajanik Ganesh Mandal, for instance, runs a dialysis centre, UPSC and MPSC training institutes and computer classes, says member Ashok Pawar.