IT Voice October 2017

[book id=’120′ /]

Business growth on Festival

India is the land of festivals, cultural fairs and holistic seasonal congregations. The country celebrates a wide range of delightful events passionately and spiritually in commemoration of the Rishis, Gurus, Gods and Goddesses and the victory of good over evil since down the ages in excess of four festivals per month without government intervention and participation except security personnel in unusual situations. As per the data released by Rajya Sabha – 2013 (Government of India), there are 51 official festivals of which 17 are nationally and 34 are regionally or locally celebrated. These festivals help to reinforce cultural roots and values, enable communities to preserve their traditions and bring economic values. All these auspicious festival roots are connected with the economic agents such as agricultural bliss, business prosperity, entrepreneurship development and social benefits.
Similarly, India is equally significant for temples which attract huge stocks of wealth by offerings, donations in the form of cash, ornaments, lands and kind by its devotees with belief and trust. Shri Padmanabha Swamy temple (Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala) is an icon for holding huge stock of gold and diamond ornaments and Sri Venkateshwara Swamy temple (Thirupathi, Andhra Pradesh) for attracting hundreds of crore rupees every year. With the usage of temples wealth, Government of Andhra Pradesh is running many subsidy and welfare schemes in a discriminatory way adhering to the majority’s beliefs like many other state governments do in India. Despite this, these temples are evidenced for the welfare of the people through food distribution, free education and facilitating water and health facilities.
Therefore, it can be said that temples are the stocks of abundant wealth and festivals are vibrant of our holistic economic system.
Economic Importance:
All these festivals allow the local communities to connect with their talent, art, craft, food, dance and other forms of cultural landscape and promote significant livelihoods through entrepreneurial activities. They fetch an economic boom through the culture of exchanging gifts, sweets and fruits which are completely associated with the economic agents such as producer, entrepreneur and consumer. In every festive season, demand for specific goods and services driven by cultural events and supply follow the demand by and large. Thousands of shopkeepers who live in a temporary shop on the streets find new opportunities during festive period.
Many market players believe that launching a new product or service during festival time attracts its target customers as compared to non-festival season. Therefore, producers and entrepreneurs wait for the auspicious occasion to launch their product or service for its demand and to establish the pan-India brand. Hence, mostly new products like automobile, home utensils, furniture and electronics etc, enter into the market during that time.
Festivals encourage the trend of sustainable spending specifically from the higher end of the social strata than the lower ends, and the lower ends tend to benefit from the consumption of the higher end by gaining additional income through entrepreneurial and tertiary activities.
Social Integration:
Celebration of the festivals is the way of life of Indians. Whole society integrates during the festivals to celebrate it privately and publicly in various temples, residential complexes, and at the streets by singing devotional songs and organizing peaceful processions of the Gods and Goddesses and exchanging sweets and gifts, etc, to the relatives, friends and neighbors. Therefore, it explores the situation to understand our co-existence of customs and culture with the economic agents.
Twelfth Five-Year Plan of India more specifically emphasized on inclusive economic growth by accommodating the marginalized sections into the mainstream economic system. In this practice, planning architects and policy makers still need to go a long way to achieve their principal goal due to splitting up of the people on the basis of gender, religion, social status and economic class by vigilant or reckless follow of western economic theories. This kind of incomprehensive economic approach never integrates the Indian society as a whole. We need to have more comprehensive understanding towards people customs, traditions, festivals and culture. On the other way our festivals succeeded in integrating the people, in community values and in ties social bondage to attain the peace, prosperity and social integrity of all the social strata in addition to bringing them into the mainstream economic system.

Tarun Taunk
Editor-In-Chief