The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Chathurthi may be a low-key affair

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 20, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Chathurthi may be a low-key affair

Vani Doraisamy

Pollution Board, police enforce rules; usual excitement is missing

NOT MANY TAKERS: An artisan at Kosapet works on Ganesa idols for which orders are limited this Vinayaka Chathurthi. — Photo: M. Vedhan

CHENNAI: : Chennai and most parts of Tamil Nadu may celebrate their first environment-friendly Vinayaka Chathurthi this September, with both the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board and the city police gearing to ensure that last year's High Court order on making Ganesha idols is implemented in letter and spirit.

This season will see idols of smaller dimensions, without chemical paints or plaster of Paris and made of clay or papier mache. The Board and the police have taken the idol makers into confidence. An informal circular sent out by the police to idol-maker associations last week asked them to restrict the height of idols to no more than five feet. On Thursday, several of the associations gave a written undertaking to the police. The court order had come a little late last year, as by then, thousands of idols had already been produced.

This year, the earnestness of the effort is in evidence at Kosapet, the city's idol-making hub, where, unlike in the past, the hum and bustle in the run-up to the Chathurthi season is absent. Kosapet's streets, where rows of giant, multicoloured Ganesha idols greeted visitors from the roadside, are devoid of any activity, save for a few potters making a handful of clay or papier mache idols. In contrast to the thousands of rupees earned by every potter family in a good season, the earnings this year will be in hundreds.

D. Srinivasan of the Tamil Nadu Kulalar Ina Nala Peravai, who made more than 50 11-foot idols each fetching more than Rs. 6,000 last year, has just six orders for five-footers this year which would cost a little over Rs. 800 each.

Mr. Srinivasan does not even know what paint he should use, as water paints, the only option left, would wash away in heavy rain. Last year, according to Mr. Srinivasan, Kosapet alone accounted for 5,000 giant idols. This year, the number will be no more than 200.

While top police officials said instructions about the court order had been communicated to the police units all over the State, TNPCB officials said idol makers had been asked to go in only for unburnt clay idols. "The public have been asked to avoid immersing plaster of Paris, chemical-painted idols in water bodies, and even otherwise, immerse the idols only half-a-kilometre into the sea and not in any other water body," TNPCB officials said.

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