Demon King Ravana victim of inflation – becomes smaller

Demon King Ravana is a symbol of Evil and on Dussera day, effigies of Ravana are burnt in a ritual that signifies the win in the battle of good over Evil. However, while Evil continues to grow by leaps and bounds in all walks of life, the size of Ravana is gradually becoming smaller and smaller because of inflation.
As the organizer of 87-year-old Sadar Ramlila has admitted – last year a 60-foot Ravana costed around Rs 45,000 inclusive of fire crackers installed in the effigy. This year, with the same budget, they had to be satisfied with a 45-foot-tall Ravan. In fact, inflation has seen Ravan's height reduce from 110 foot to around 50 foot in the span of a decade.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 20 October 2015.

Apart from height reduction, other methods employed to keep within the budget is to do away with Kumbhkaran as has been done by an organizer – for the past two years, they have erected effigies of only Ravan and Megnath only.
Earlier, the cost of all three would come to around Rs 20,000 but now, the cost escalated to more than Rs 25,000 for just two.
Some others have cut down on firecrackers in order to but maintain the heights of Ravana and Megnath.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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