Mandals fall short of funds

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Earlier, Mohite says, a lot of businessmen would put up their stalls or advertisement banners for 10 days at their mandal and pay a specific amount, from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh, depending on the popularity of the mandal. However, the advertisements coming to Seva Mitra Mandal this year have reduced by nearly 50 per cent this year.

City-based Anand Saraf, a Ganeshotsav researcher, says there are 4,054 registered and nearly 4,000 unregistered Ganesh mandals in the city. Besides this, 15,000-odd housing societies celebrate the festival. “There is an overall slack in the market. Ninety per cent of the mandals are barely able to match income with expenses. Most of them end up spending from their pockets. However, because they want to continue the festival with the same fervour as visualised by Lokmanya Tilak, they somehow manage the festival every year despite all financial hardships,” Saraf says.

At Tulsibaug Ganesh Mandal, owing to less collection, efforts have been taken to reduce expenses. Nitin Panditof the mandal says that considering increase in prices of all the necessary commodities, the team has decided to accept whatever donation amount is being offered by the contributors, especially businessmen, who are affected the most by the slack in the market.

“The last time we came across such a sharp fall in the collection was when swine flu scare engulfed the city. Almost 25 per cent shortfall has been recorded in total vargani this year. As a regular practice, we use just 50 per cent of the total collection in celebrations and use the rest for social activities held throughout the year. Even those too will get affected this year,” says Rahul Jadhav of Shri Ashtavinayak Mitra Mandal.