Diwali is the biggest festival for Hindus who form the majority of the population in India. Irrespective of the region they come from, almost all Hindus celebrate the festival of lights by burning diyas and bursting crackers during the two-day festival.
But in a shocking report, it has been revealed that all of India burst crackers costing more than Rs 3000 plus crores in just one day.
Of the 250 million households in India, 80.5% are Hindus. Out of these, nearly 200 million are estimated to have burnt crackers on the big day.
If one were to assume that 68.7% of the population that lives on less than $2 or roughly Rs 120 per day did not burst crackers, it leaves us with 62.6 million families that burnt crackers on Diwali.
And if we roughly estimate that of the 62.6 million families, nearly 50% of them did not burn crackers, then we are left with 31.3 million families burning crackers.
While that is good news for the fireworks companies, it means that the 31.3 million families would have spent an average of Rs 1000 for crackers. That is, on an average, whopping Rs 3130 crores were spent on burning crackers this Diwali by Indians living in India.
For a country grappling with serious poverty and developmental issues, this is indeed huge spending for one day. But again, the festival of lights comes only once in a year. Well, there is no win-win situation for those hoping to find a ‘happy’ solution for this kind of extravagance as faith always wins over economics.
