Kerala   

Organising festival fairs

The SGSY\IRDP mela, which concluded here on Sunday, was a great crowd puller. The last two days saw heavy rush of people. On Sunday evening, the rush reached its peak. Surely, the mela which witnessed brisk sales, must have achieved a lot in terms of revenue also.

But the way the fair was arranged caused much inconvenience to the visitors. They had to squeeze through the crowd to move from one stall to another. Some of the stalls, which were classrooms of Government Training and Government Model Higher Secondary School, had their passage separated by small wooden blocks like barricades within which there was only little space for a person to scrape through.

Also, one wonders why every block (12 blocks from the district and three blocks from Wayanad district) was displaying almost the same type of products, be it textiles, food products or handicrafts.

However, the Subiksha stall provided a refreshing experience with their variety of products.

The crowd that were attracted to the mela should have provided much needed succour to the sellers, who belonged to the families below the poverty line. Such melas should be organised not only during Onam but also on other festival occasions every year to help them out.

J.S. Bablu

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