Puja organisers keep one eye on city mood, another on festival calendar
Times of India | 7 September 2024
Kolkata: The apparent lack of enthusiasm among the masses about Durga Puja, which is just over a month away, has left organisers of major crowd-puller pandals worried about the impact of the current sombre mood in the city on sponsorship this year.
While the overall mood in the city usually turns festive around two months ahead of the festival, the rape and murder of the PGT doctor at RG Kar have led to public outrage with people forgoing their puja shopping plans and instead taking part in protests to demand justice.A few social media posts, suggesting the festival be curtailed this time, have alarmed the organisers so much that Forum for Durgotsab (FFD), the umbrella organisation representing some of the biggest pujas in Kolkata, urged the general public a fortnight ago not to link the festival with the R G Kar tragedy.
Two weeks on, as people continue to protest and pre-puja shopping footfall remains low, several puja organisers are getting worried about the effect this may have on potential advertisers. “Durga Puja will happen the way it was planned as themes are decided around nine months before the festival and pandal construction starts around three months ahead. But with joy conspicuously absent and protests still raging across the city and even in other parts of India, advertisers may become wary and not invest as much as they usually do,” said Partho Ghosh, a key functionary at Shib Mandir and founder of FFD.
Saswata Bose of Hatibagan Sarbajanin, also the FFD secretary, felt the strident mood would get tempered closer to the festival. “During Covid, despite the fear of infection, people visited pandals. This time, there is anger and dejection over the RG Kar crime but no such fear. Companies that spend on sponsorships will definitely get eyeballs,” he said.
Of the Durga Puja economy, which is pegged at around Rs 50,000 crore, pandals, idols, lighting and decoration account for around Rs 1,600 crore. Almost 60% of this budget is generated through sponsorships. Since most companies that advertise big in Durga Puja are from either Mumbai or Bengaluru, the deals are usually sealed after Ganesh Puja. “Till now, we have not had any sponsorships back out. It will be sad if some of them do because we cannot curtail the expenditure at this stage,” said Bose.
Tala Barowari, which is held in the same neighbourhood as R G Kar Medical College, took a brave decision to release a teaser saying, ‘#Everyonewantsjustice’, with a picture of a dhaki, with his son in his arms. Abhishek Bhattacharya, general secretary of the 104-year-old puja, said, “We strongly condemn the heinous crime and have joined the protests. But we also believe we cannot ignore the biggest festival. A large number of people are dependent on the festival for their livelihood. They are all worried,” said Bhattacharya.