Ganesha Nimajjanam

The Real Cost of Visarjan: What Ganesh Idol Immersion Does to India's Water

Sep 27, 2026 · @Ravindra Papineni

The festival is over. The water is still paying for it.

In the last week of September 2026, more than 300,000 Ganesh idols were immersed in the lakes, rivers and sea of just two Indian cities. Most were made of plaster of Paris and coated in synthetic paint. None of that material dissolves back into nature the way clay does.

Ganesh Chaturthi ended with Anant Chaturdashi on 25 September. The processions made the news. The cleanup crews did not. This post looks at what the data actually says about visarjan (called nimajjanam in Telugu), what it does to our water, and why the rules meant to stop it keep changing.

This is not an argument against a festival. It is an argument for looking at evidence, including the evidence that is inconvenient for everyone involved.

The numbers from this year

Mumbai alone immersed nearly 200,000 idols in 2026, and Hyderabad's festival waste grew almost 40% in one year.

Mumbai immersed 199,325 idols this year: 182,048 household idols, 10,536 public idols and 6,741 Gauri/Hartalika idols. Hyderabad immersed about 120,000. Its sanitation teams cleared 4,527 tons of festival waste in two days, up from 3,266 tons last year.

Smaller places add up too. Raigad district planned for 13,597 immersions. Bhiwandi immersed 2,159, with 67 recorded separately as shadu clay idols.

There is no official national total. Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh all hold large immersions, so the true figure is certainly several times what is shown here. Any single nationwide number you see online is an estimate.

What changed: from river clay to plaster and paint

The ritual did not change. The materials did, and that is the whole problem.

Traditional idols were shaped from local clay and colored with natural pigments such as turmeric. Immersed, they returned to the riverbed they came from. Today most idols are cast in plaster of Paris (PoP), reinforced with iron rods and bamboo, and finished with synthetic paints and varnish.

PoP is cheaper, lighter and lets makers build idols tens of feet tall. Hyderabad's Khairatabad idol reached 69 feet in 2025. But PoP dissolves very slowly, and the paints on it can carry heavy metals. Add plastic decorations, thermocol, cloth and garlands, and each idol becomes a bundle of mixed waste delivered straight into a water body.

The competition between mandals for the biggest, brightest idol has turned a household ritual into an industrial-scale disposal event.

Hussain Sagar: a lake that never gets to recover

Hyderabad's Hussain Sagar shows what happens when a city uses the same lake as its immersion site every year.

After the 2025 nimajjanam, the lakefront was buried in idol fragments, bamboo poles, metal scrap and wet waste. Floating cranes pulled half-sunk idols from the water, and one municipal worker estimated the cleanup would take a month. Authorities removed the remains of 4,360 idols from the lake. Telangana Pollution Control Board tests found high chromium levels in the water. By February 2026 the lake had turned yellowish-green, with a smell that drove visitors away.

The cleanup of the 2026 festival began this weekend: 100 workers in three shifts across 38 immersion sites.

The part critics of the festival often leave out. Idols are not the main reason Hussain Sagar is sick. The same reporting points to untreated industrial effluent and failing sewage treatment plants as ongoing sources. Immersion is a massive annual shock layered on top of year-round neglect. Blaming only the idols lets the factories and the municipal sewage system off the hook. Blaming only the factories lets the festival off the hook. Both deserve scrutiny.

The courts have noticed. When the Telangana High Court barred PoP idol immersion in the lake in 2021, it said plainly that no scripture requires idols to be made of PoP and synthetic colours, or to be immersed in Hussain Sagar in particular. The Supreme Court allowed that year's immersion anyway, as a last exception, and told the state to arrange alternatives by the next festival. Five years later, the immersions in Hussain Sagar continue.

The rules keep bending

India's own pollution regulator called PoP idols prohibited for five years, then told a court its rules were only advice.

In May 2020 the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) issued revised guidelines favoring natural clay and natural dyes. In January 2025 the Bombay High Court relied on them to ban the making, sale and immersion of PoP idols. Five months later, the CPCB told the same court its guidelines were only "advisory", and the ban on making and selling PoP idols was lifted.

Maharashtra then wrote its own rule in August 2025. PoP idols over six feet could go into natural water bodies; smaller ones had to use artificial ponds. In July 2026 the court criticized the CPCB for disowning guidelines it had defended before the National Green Tribunal and other High Courts. In August it reserved its final judgment, leaving the six-foot rule in force until then.

Look at what that compromise does. The smallest idols go to contained ponds. The largest ones, carrying the most plaster and paint, go into the sea and rivers. That is the reverse of what the pollution evidence supports.

The pattern is not unique to Maharashtra. In Bengaluru, a former mayor said the city could not stop PoP immersions in lakes because doing so would hurt religious sentiment. Environmental rules are written on evidence. They are enforced, or not, on sentiment.

What works, and what to demand

The fixes are known, cheap and already working in places. What is missing is consistent enforcement.

• Artificial ponds. On the Dikrong River, idols immersed in artificial ponds did measurably less damage than those immersed directly, because the pollutants stayed contained. Mumbai sent roughly 40% of its 2025 immersions to more than 290 artificial ponds. The goal should be 100%.

• Separating offerings. Mumbai collected around 508 tons of flowers and garlands in 2025 for composting. In Bhiwandi this year, volunteers turned offerings into organic manure.

• Clay and natural colours. This is the original tradition, not a modern compromise. Small-scale clay idol craftsmen were among the petitioners who pushed the Bombay High Court to enforce the PoP ban.

• Height limits. The CPCB has suggested them. In Hyderabad, most installations ignored them in 2025.

What readers can do:

1. Choose a clay idol, or skip the idol and support a community one.

2. Use the artificial pond, not the lake or sea.

3. Ask your municipal body to publish immersion-site water tests before and after the festival.

4. Ask elected representatives why the largest idols are exempt from the rules that bind the smallest.

A festival that celebrates a remover of obstacles should not leave a new one in every lake. The evidence is clear enough. The only open question is whether we are willing to act on it.

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