From Our Correspondent
Guwahati: With the most popular religious festival of Hindus in the eastern part of India, Durga Puja is knocking at the door, the atmosphere is gripped in festivities even in flood-affected Assam. Artisans are busy giving final touch to idols (Durga Protima) while Puja organizers have started laying the skeleton of what expected to become sprawling and glitzy puja pandals.
However, idol makers this time have found it very tough to make good business out of their traditional profession because of various reasons. One of the key reasons is the spiraling prices of various items required for making idols even as the buyers are not willing to cough up the proportionately higher prices of idols.
“Cost has escalated manifold, but our customers want to pay price almost at the same level as in previous years. To reduce the cost the buyers ask us to reduce the size of idols, still they don’t want to pay more,” said artisan Ramesh Chandra Pal who has been in the business for the last 40 years.
Sixty-four years old Pal has been in the business of idol-making for the last 40 years.
This year, devastating flood in Assam has precipitated a scarcity of two types of special soils – kumar mati (sticky soil) and river-deposited soil – that are required for idol making. Because of the scarcity, the price of the sticky variety of soil has shot up to Rs 6000 per mini-truck from the previous year’s price of Rs 2500 per mini-truck. Similarly, the price of per truck of river sand has gone up to Rs 2500 compared to the price of Rs 1500 last year.