A rise in the variety of aerial firecrackers has led to fewer people going for noisy ones, like chocolate bombs.
If the sale of firecrackers is anything to go by the efforts to bring down the noise pollution, especially due to bursting of fire crackers during Diwali, has borne fruit.
“The sale of noisy firecrackers has reduced drastically in the last five years. There seems to be more awareness today than before and especially in Mumbai people want less noise pollution,” said Abdullah Ghia, owner of Essabhai fireworks at Mohammad Ali road.
“Of the total sale of firecrackers the sale of the noisy ones like bombs is just about 10 to 15 per cent,” he said.
This sentiment is echoed by many others in the business.
Minesh Mehta who has been selling firecrackers for the last 26 years feels that the demand for noisy firecrackers seems to be declining every year.
“While earlier about 50 to 60% of our stock used to be bombs and other loud crackers, today we stock just about 30% of them. And out of our total sale the sale of these loud ones would be just about 20 to 25%,” said Mehta.
Mehta attributes the decline to not only awareness but also to more variety available in non-noisy firecrackers. The variety in aerial fire crackers is increasing every year and there are many coloured varieties which are extremely popular. Pointing out to a huge bag full of firecrackers Ghia said, “This is a purchase of about Rs5,000 and about half of it is aerial firecrackers, whereas the noisy ones would hardly amount to about 10%.”
Though the sale of noisy firecrackers have reduced, anti-noise activist Sumaira Abdulali feels a lot more needs to be done to completely ban the noisy firecrackers.
“The sale of noisy firecrackers should be completely stopped as most of them are illegal.” Most of the bombs according to her exceed the prescribed decibel level and are sold illegally. Also bursting of firecrackers beyond 10pm is against a Supreme Court ruling and action should be taken to check violations.
“There probably should be a separate cell to keep check on it,” she added.
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