The government’s ban has brought a loss for traditional fireworks sellers.
Bengaluru: Traditional fire-works sellers faced losses as the government banned their crackers and promoted -green crackers this Diwali.
The Karnataka government issued an order stating that only green crackers are allowed and traditional crackers would be banned. This impacted the sale of traditional fireworks negatively.
Ramaswami, the owner of SLV crackers, Bangalore said, “as government imposed green crackers, we suffered a loss of 80 percent in traditional firecrackers due to green crackers. We had to send back the stock to the manufacturers as no one was purchasing the traditional one”.
A.G.Shashi Kumar, owner of Shree Balaji Enterprises, said, “We have incurred a loss of 50 percent in traditional fire-crackers and now we have no idea how we are going to uplift the condition”.
Vaishnavi firecrackers’ shop owner said that, they incurred a loss of 40 percent in their traditional firecrackers and now the manufacturers are also not taking the stock back.
Tabbaggar, a wholesaler and owner of RS Traders said that he suffered a loss of 30-60 percent in the sale of traditional fireworks. He added that he was trying to balance out his loss with the sale of green crackers, but so far there has been no profit.
Green crackers are much more eco-friendly than traditional fireworks. Studies show that there is a 30 percent reduction in particulate matter emission with the use of green crackers.
Jyoti Chawhan, a customer of one of the firecrackers shop said, “I will always buy traditional crackers over green crackers but as Karnataka government has asked us to be helpful towards our environment, we have to purchase green crackers.”She added that traditional crackers have more variety—there are rockets, fountains, spinning wheels, noisy bombs, etc. There are comparatively less types of green crackers.
Lalit Bhaskar, an environmentalist said that, “Green crackers are a blessing for the environment, as they do not completely stop the pollution, but still, they are helping in a major way.Traditional fireworks have their own joy as people are used to thembut now people have to understand that we have to be careful towards our environment, as air quality is getting degraded day by day.”
