{"id":16908,"date":"2020-07-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2020\/07\/22\/priests-hit-hard-as-income-dries-up-amid-covid-19-crisis\/"},"modified":"2020-07-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T12:00:00","slug":"priests-hit-hard-as-income-dries-up-amid-covid-19-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2020\/07\/22\/priests-hit-hard-as-income-dries-up-amid-covid-19-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Priests Hit Hard as Income Dries Up Amid COVID-19 Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.siasat.com\/priests-hit-hard-as-income-dries-up-amid-covid-19-crisis-1926568\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>KOLKATA, INDIA, July 20, 2020 (Siasat Daily): With several weddings and religious functions being put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many Hindu priests in Kolkata and its vicinity are in dire straits, some even looking for an alternative source of income to make ends meet. Sushanta Chakraborty, a priest in Agarpara on the northern outskirts of the city, is selling vegetables in his locality, something that he said his &#8220;ancestors couldn&#8217;t have thought of, no matter what the circumstances.&#8221; &#8220;Some households which I had been visiting for decades to perform rituals on auspicious occasions wouldn&#8217;t invite me anymore.&#8221; &#8220;Before March, I used to earn anything between US$467 and $534 every month. Now, I barely manage to take home $10.68 per day,&#8221; Chakraborty said.<\/p>\n<p>Vijay Upadhay, a priest in the city&#8217;s Kestopur area, has taken to Facebook to urge people that they be allowed to perform household rituals. &#8220;Narayan puja rituals are now taking place without the presence of a priest in many households. I appeal to all of you to remove the misgivings and allow priests conduct the rituals,&#8221; he said. Montu Chakroborty, a priest in south Kolkata&#8217;s Chakraberia area, believes that the situation will change for the better during Durga puja.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source KOLKATA, INDIA, July 20, 2020 (Siasat Daily): With several weddings and religious functions being put on hold due to,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}