India's Ganesh idol makers count the cost of devastating floods
Standing among the broken remains of hundreds of clay idols in his workshop in India's Raigad district, sculptor Dilip Mhatre struggles to hold back his
Standing among the broken remains of hundreds of clay idols in his workshop in India's Raigad district, sculptor Dilip Mhatre struggles to hold back his emotions. Just weeks before Ganesh Chaturthi, one of the country's biggest religious festivals honouring the Hindu deity Ganesha, floods have destroyed six months of his work. The 40-year-old had completed about 500 clay idols of the elephant-headed god, worth around 800,000 rupees ($8,300; £6,200), which were due to be delivered across the western state of Maharashtra, where Raigad is located, over the coming weeks.
"But the flood washed everything away," he says. "We have no idols, no moulds and no raw material. We don't know how we'll fulfil the orders now." Mhatre's loss is part of a wider crisis unfolding in Raigad. Every year, millions of families and community groups install clay idols of Ganesha during Ganesh Chaturthi before immersing them in water at the end of the celebrations. Most of those idols are made in Raigad, where some 20,000 workshops produce up to eight million idols each year.
The industry provides seasonal employment to around 150,000 people and generates around 3.5bn rupees in annual sales, making it the economic backbone of many families in the region. This year, however, floods have damaged thousands of idols and hundreds of workshops, disrupting supplies and threatening the livelihoods of thousands of artisans. "Around a million Ganesh idols were damaged by heavy rains across the district," says Sachin Patil, president of the Ganesh Murtikar Utkarsh Mandal, an association representing idol makers in the region.
He said around 3,000 idol-making workshops were affected by the rain. Local authorities have started surveying the damage. Government official Tanaji Shejal told BBC Marathi that financial assistance would be provided under government rules once the assessments were completed.
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