Glitzy Ganesh idol immersions leave behind chaos

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Community guards immersing a Ganesh idol at Naval Coastal Battery in Visakhapatnam on Sunday. | Photo Credit: V. RAJU

The city’s Vinayaka Chavithi festivities culminated over the weekend in a mix of colour and chaos, as hundreds of devotees carried idols to the coast for immersion while clean-up crews grappled with the aftermath by Sunday morning.

Processions through the night featured tableaux of mythological figures, folk dance troupes and drummers, drawing large crowds on the streets leading to RK Beach and other immersion places. Families, many with children in tow, gathered at the shore to bid farewell to their idols amid chants and applause, underlining the festival’s continuing pull on the city’s public life.

The Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) had designated immersion points across the city, including Sagar Nagar, Jodugulapalem, Lumbini Park, Bheemili Beach, the Gosthani river near the Tagarapuvalasa flyover, Mangamaripeta Beach, Annavaram Beach, the IT SEZ beach cutting point, the area opposite the Naval Coastal Battery, Yarada Fishing Jetty and Appikonda Beach. Officials had directed that barricades, lighting, lifeguards, boats, cranes, drinking water and medical teams be stationed at each point, with dedicated routes kept clear for ambulances and fire engines.

Devotees were also asked to avoid using fresh water for immersion, given the city’s water stress, and to confine idol immersion to the designated beach points.

That advisory, however, appeared to have been only partly heeded. By Sunday morning, several stretches of the coast, including Pedda Jalaripeta beach, not all of them official immersion sites, were strewn with idol frames, flowers, plastic bags and other puja waste, forcing sanitation workers to begin large-scale clearance operations soon after sunrise. Discarded straw-and-bamboo frames and remnants of larger community idols lay abandoned on the sand alongside piles of flowers, banana leaves and plastic waste.

GVMC workers clear puja material, including plastic waste, at Naval Coastal Battery in Visakhapatnam on Sunday, after Ganesh idol immersion. | Photo Credit: V. RAJU

Environmentalists said the scale of the waste pointed to a larger, recurring problem. C.V. Naidu, Head of the Department of Meteorology and Oceanography at Andhra University, said the dumping of plastic and Plaster-of-Paris idols into the sea harmed marine life, with fish ingesting plastic that could eventually enter the human food chain as microplastics. “Plastic carry bags, water bottles and PoP idols should either be banned or their use restricted. Both the government and the public have an equal responsibility to protect the environment. Only clay Ganesha idols should be used,” he said.

With sanitation staff working through the morning to restore the beaches, the contrast between the previous night’s festivity and the visible cost it left behind was, once again, difficult to miss.

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