How Green Is My Festival?

MUMBAI HAS BEEN the epicentre of Ganesh Chaturthi as a public spectacle with its origins going back to Lokmanya Tilak using it as a form of political and social mobilisation. When the Makba Chawl Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Mandal in Byculla began celebrating it 60 years ago, it was joining a cultural tradition that was firmly established. But in 1992, the Man- dal began to add something new to the mix, eco-friendliness. Their idol this year is a Ganesh that is green in colour, made out of bamboo sticks. It is deliberate symbolism. Anurag Jaiswal, who has been involved in organising the festival there, says, “We select different themes every year along with some kind of social awareness or message for the benefit of people, society and nature. During Covid we created an artificial pond on the premises itself to immerse the idol and used the soil for planting trees within the society. All activities are planned and executed by the Mandal members. From art and design to decoration, the idol is made at the mandap itself.”

Indian festivals have always been communal events but it is only lately that the focus has turned to aligning them with the environment because of its impact on the surroundings. Ganesh idols, for example, are immersed in water bodies after varied du- rations during the 10-day period and that did not matter much to the environment when the festival was a small, contained event. But if the entire city is participating, it means enormous pollution of many forms. Studies have quantified it. A 2019 paper published in the International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development, looked at the water of Gorai Creek, a popular immersion spot. Significant increase was found in turbidity and also the presence of elements like chloride, sulphate, suspended and dissolved solids. The main culprit was Plaster of Paris (PoP), the material from which idols are sculpted. Then the chemical paints put on them. The paper said, “Plaster of Paris is not a naturally occurring material and contains gypsum, sulphur, phosphorus and magnesium. The idols take several months to dissolve in water and in the process poison the waters of lake, ponds, rivers and seas.

The Chemical Paints used to decorate the Ganesh idol contain mercury, lead, cadmium and carbon and this increases the acidity and heavy metal content of water. Several accessories used during the Ganesh Puja, like thermocol, plastic flowers, cloth, incense, camphor and numerous other materials are dumped carelessly adding more strain to the already polluted rivers and lakes.”

There has however been increasing efforts to ban the use of PoP but, as with the pace of change in India, execution is in grinding stages. In 2020, the Central Pollution Control Board said PoP should not be used for idols, leading to a long tug of war to get it executed. The Bombay High Court had earlier ordered a ban on PoP idols but in July this year, a few months before the fes- tival, the court permitted it but with a host of conditions. Such as,

idols under six feet not being allowed to be immersed in natural water bodies but only in artificial tanks. This itself would be a significant step. Earlier, the government had set the height of idols coming under this measure at five feet and figures quoted by the civic body said that would mean 1,10,000 idols would not find their way to the sea or rivers. By increasing it to six feet, more idols came under this ambit. This week, the Supreme Court stepped in, asking also for a review of the high court order permitting PoP idols. It will not impact the current festival but what it signals is the festival becoming less deleterious to the environment with every passing year. Some states have made Ganesh Chaturthi even cleaner. Karnataka and Goa, for instance, have banned PoP idols altogether.

Other religious festivals are also witnessing a similar phenomenon. Diwali, which sees among the biggest nationwide celebrations, has had a range of pollution issues trailing it because of the use of firecrackers in the celebrations. Delhi has been especially at the centre of this because the festival coincides with the advent of winter when smog, for a variety of reasons, engulfs the state and air pollution reaches extraordinary levels. It leads to a host of medical problems for vulnerable populations. Smoke from Diwali firecrackers are the icing on the top of that caustic cake. In 2024, the Centre for Science and Environment and its magazine Down to Earth analysed the air quality data and found extreme rise in pollution levels. Levels of PM 2.5, the smallest and the most harmful pollutant, kept rising in the days running up to the festival, by as much as 46 per cent. “Not only was there particulate matter to worry about; nitrogen dioxide (NO) levels told their own troubling tale. For the third year running, NO2 levels spiked on Diwali night and the nights before, mirroring the traffic congestion typical of festival season,” said their report.

FOR ABOUT A DECADE, even the Supreme Court had become increasingly stringent with orders on how to reduce pollution from firecrackers. Last year, it seemed to have run out of patience and ordered that nothing but a complete ban on all firecrackers would do. As a result, the Delhi government has instituted one on manufacture, storage, sale and use of firecrackers in the National Capital Region (NCR) since January 1 this year. The court was not through. It asked neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to also have similar bans in NCR that fall in their states. In April this year, the court refused to reduce the totality of the ban, even for ‘green crackers’ which emitted 30 per cent fewer pollutants than conventional ones. There was

also a request to keep the ban to only three or four months, which too was denied. It said in its order, “Restricting [the] ban for [a] few months will not serve any purpose as firecrackers would be sold throughout the year and they will be stored and used during the ban period. Unless the court is satisfied that the pollution caused by the “so-called Green crackers” is to the bare minimum, there is no question of reconsidering the earlier orders.”

While the scale of pollution is making the judiciary force Diwali to become more eco-friendly, Holi, an- other major festival, is doing so from a grassroots level, with temples and organisations taking a ‘green’ approach. Since the last decade or so, in Vrindavan, the pilgrimage town known for its Holi celebrations, the temple of Banke Bihari has started a celebration called ‘Phoolonwali Holi’, in which

priests throw flower petals instead of colours on devotees. In places like Mathura too, temples have started to encourage the use of organic colours where the dyes are made from natural elements instead of chemicals. Local communities, NGOs, municipalities are promoting the use of organic colours and water conservation during Holi. Antarkranti, a prisoner reformation programme by the NGO Divya Jyoti Jagrati Sansthan, gets in- mates to make herbal colours which are then sold in the open market. There are also startups creating businesses around it. Holy Waste, for instance, is one such Hyderabad business based on the idea of recycling flowers used in places like temples. One of the products it creates out of them is a coloured Holi powder.

This year, before Ganesh Chaturthi, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, in its bid to wean idol sculptors away from PoP, distributed 910 tonnes of clay and around 1,000 litres of or- ganic paint. As many as 288 artificial ponds have been created across Mumbai where the idols will be immersed. After about two weeks, the remains will be collected and disposed. Contrast that with the past when all these idols and chemicals that the idols were made of would go into the ocean and be swept back, or remain in the water bodies inside the city.

There is a long way to go before festivals stop adding pollution to India. Most measures, even those legally dictated by the state, are flouted because policing is difficult on such a wide scale. NCR might have a ban on fire crackers but people will buy from the black market and burst them on Diwali. And idols below six feet might be immersed in artificial ponds in Mumbai but there have been al- legations that the same water is then released into the sea without proper treatment. The normal inefficiency of government agencies will not change for just a festival. But even if a total solution remains distant, there is change and in the right direction.

 

 

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