Mandals skip decorations for a cause

While most Ganesh mandals are spending lakhs on fancy decorations for Ganesh festival, some are using the festival as a platform to raise social awareness on female foeticide.

Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak started the public celebration of Ganesh festival with the view to unite people and create awareness on social issues. However, over the years, the nature of the festival has changed from social to commercial with most mandals spending a lot of money on decorations than for some social cause.

However, some mandals still uphold the spirit of the festival and mandals like Perugate Chowk Mitra Mandal and Dharmveer Tarun Mandal, along with Grahak Peth cooperative departmental store, are spreading awareness against female foeticide during this year’s Ganesh festival.

Grahak Peth cooperative departmental store has chosen the theme of ‘Save a girl child’ for this year’s celebration and has appointed all women on the executive body for organising the festival.

Suryakant Pathak, founder of Grahak Peth, said, “The festival will be managed by women and through this festival we want to project that women are capable of performing any kind of duty.”
“We have put up six banners that tell success stories of women, including Lata Mangeshkar, Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa.

Besides, our dhol-tasha troupe also has women performers.”
Dharmveer Tarun Mandal Trust in Guruwar Peth has also taken up the same theme. Mandal president Atul Bhingarkar said, “We have chosen the theme where a girl is praying to her mother that she wants to live.”

“We have created a 16-minute audio-visual presentation in which we have taken up recent issues like the Beed foeticide case to show how sonography centres are used for female foeticide. At the end of the presentation, one of the girls from our mandal will appear on the stage to urge the audience to discourage female foeticide,” he added.

Another mandal in old Pune, Perugate Chowk Mitra Mandal has prepared an 11-minute slide show to create awareness that girls are not less than boys in any way.

The mandal’s executive president Satish Sane said, “Apart from this slide show, we are also felicitating 111 families who have one or two daughters. We have also started a signature campaign to register at least 25,000 signatures to bring in a law against female foeticide.”