For a change, it was the business community in Adilabad which was forced to keep the Deepavali celebration at a low key due to the economic crisis continuing to grip it. Though not with the same gusto, farmers did manage to celebrate the festival with happiness as the kharif season ended not as bad as the preceding three years. There was a reduction by half in the quantum of fire crackers burst in the market place on the occasion of Laxmi puja on Wednesday which itself was an indicator of the austerity measures initiated by the business community. “We purchased crackers worth Rs. 2,000 instead of the usual Rs. 5,000 this instance,” revealed Girish Makadia of the Girish Hardware at Gandhi Chowk.
In the normal course of things the bang of bursting crackers could be heard beyond midnight in the market place. This year the celebrations closed at around 11 p.m.
There are about 2,000 shops and other business establishments in the main markets of Adilabad town which account for purchase of about Rs. 1 crore of crackers every year. “This year, the business community seems to have spent only about Rs. 50 lakh on purchase of fire crackers,” estimated Suleman Jessani, one of the oldest crackers merchants in town. “We have had to deal with considerably less quantum of litter this year. Instead of the usual 20 tractors we need to collect the garbage generated by spent crackers we used only 10,” pointed out Municipal Sanitary Inspector Md. Ayaz to indicate the low key of celebrations.
Last year, the sale of crackers was estimated to be about 1.5 crore through about 60 retail shops set up in the Ramlila maidan. This year too, the sale touched the same mark but the clientele of the fire cracker shops was mostly farmers and others. “The sale may not be comparable as there was general increase of about 20 per cent in the price of fire crackers this year," Mr. Suleman pointed out. “The inflationary trends also had an impact on the festivities,”.
