{"id":7109,"date":"2008-10-09T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/10\/09\/corporate-sponsorship-of-pujas-increases\/"},"modified":"2008-10-09T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-09T12:00:00","slug":"corporate-sponsorship-of-pujas-increases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/10\/09\/corporate-sponsorship-of-pujas-increases\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Sponsorship of Pujas Increases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.ndtv.com\/convergence\/ndtv\/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080068133&#038;ch=10\/9\/2008%2011:06:00%20AM\">www.ndtv.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">KOLKATA, INDIA, October 9, 2008:  Durga Puja is on the fast track to becoming a branded affair. Corporate sponsorships of Durga Puja in West Bengal have increased by 30 per cent in 2008&#8211;at rates ranging from five to ten million rupees, depending on the locality. Corporations are taking over the entire marketing rights of the puja event, and sponsors are adopting crowd-pulling activities to hard sell their brands.<\/p>\n<p>Kolkata residents seem resigned to the idea. &#8220;Either it&#8217;s the corporates that are going to finance it, or the political parties, to be very honest. Corporates are a very integral part of the puja. I can&#8217;t imagine a puja without a Pepsi or a Coke or maybe a Colgate. That&#8217;s how puja is in Kolkata,&#8221; said a girl.<\/p>\n<p>With mounting expenses of constructing pandals and making Durga idols, subscriptions and advertisements are no longer enough to raise funds, and corporate sponsorships are seen as a boon. But there is no assurance that the corporations will sponsor the eventregularly, and puja organizers are uncertain about next year&#8217;s funding.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.ndtv.com KOLKATA, INDIA, October 9, 2008: Durga Puja is on the fast track to becoming a branded affair. Corporate sponsorships,&#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-7109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7109","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=7109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}