Under a month to go for the Ganesh festival in Hyderabad, the artisanal streets of Dhoolpet and its surrounding areas are deserted. Where there used to be clamour of workers giving the finishing touches to the towering Ganesh idols, the only sounds are the pealing bells from temples. “We have lost one whole year. All the workers have gone back to their native places. I have not stepped out of my home,” says Sundar Kalakar, who has one of the biggest workshops in the area.
“We have been orally instructed by the police not to make idols due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A fortnight ago, nearly 500 artisans were called by the police in the area and were told not to go ahead with making of the idols,” said Mr. Sundar, who has been in the profession from childhood. His workshop employed 100 people, a majority of them from West Bengal, and a sprinkling of them from Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
The cycle of work for creation of Ganesh idols begins with Dasara, Deepavali and continues through the year so that the artisans can cater to the demand by Ganesh festival committees that pop up throughout the city. “The loss runs into crores as everyone associated with the event is affected. There are painters, mould makers, welders and manual labourers who are now jobless as we had to shut down our work,” says Manoj Singh, another artisan of the area.
Another festival site where hundreds of artisans find work between May and Ganesh festival day is the Khairatabad junction which sees one of the tallest idols in the city installed. “We are waiting it out. We will decide in the first week of August about the size of the idol. Nothing is certain any more,” says S. Raj Kumar of the festival committee about the celebration. Last year, the committee had installed a 61-foot-tall idol that took about 200 workers four months to complete.
The shutdown of these artisan workshops has created financial distress among the workers as well as owners. “We have a line of credit from money lenders and now they are asking us to pay. We are on the brink,” said the owner of a workshop, unwilling to go on record. Many workshop owners depend on informal lines of credit for their day-to-day functioning.
This year, Ganesh Chaturthi is on August 22.
