United way?

The nine glorious nights of ‘Navratri’ to Vadodara is one of the biggest and much awaited festival of the year. Every garba loving person of city makes it a point to go to United Way because of the smart marketing. Perhaps, the only reason is Mr. Atul Purohit,United Way of Baroda’s brand name.

This year United Way went online which is obviously way better than standing in never-ending queues for hours in the heat. While filling up my registration form all I spotted was FOR MALE – BY GIVING RS. 2500/- AS DONATION. (EXTRA RS. 25 TOWARDS ONLINE CONVINENCE FEES) THIS VOLUNTARY DONATION IS NON REFUNDABLE. What a shocker!

The entire concept of female fanatics paying Rs 200 as security deposit which is refundable whereas the male fanatics paying Rs 2500 which is donated. Why the discrimination? Isn’t the basic definition of ‘Equality’, to be equals be it male or female? Even if a reasonable hike of Rs 100 or Rs 200 is still understandable but a direct jump of Rs 500 is way too much. As for the girls, nearly 50% of them don’t go back to take their security deposits and the ones that do are persuaded to donate the amount. May be, to the United Way of Baroda male species aren’t good enough to be honoured with the courtesy to be asked to willingly donate the amount. In those 9 fancy days, every male garba fanatic has to almost pay Rs 2300 extra (if compared), get only approximately 2 hours to play, moreover pay for the parking, food and after garba hangouts. Even opposing in the time of inflation won’t do any good, but they can at least increase the time limit to after midnight. I definitely think United Way of Baroda doesn’t believe in ‘Equality’.

The whole idea behind setting up this organisation was to mobilize the resources from the local communities and apply them to strengthen social sectors in the city by funding to non-profit organisations. Everyone in the city knows United Way of Baroda makes money in crore which is pure profit before a week of Navratri after deducting all the expenses and as for the sponsorship their profits are decided after the 9 eventful days. Gone are the days when United Way’s main objective was to be non-profitable body. Today even though the funds go the right places, United Way of Baroda is become a full fledged business as the outcome is less than the income.

Let’s see at the approximate calculations of the income generated by our famous NGO funding organisation:

• United Way has around 40 to 50 canteen stalls which include both VIP and General stalls out of which 10 stalls are for beverages and the rest are for food.
  • The income generated from the rent of beverage stall is around Rs 3 lakhs to Rs 4 lakhs and the rent of food stalls is around Rs 50,000.
  •  On an average 100 (approximately) people with V.VIP passes donate about Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000. They are provided with car parking space for two cars and VIP seating arrangement to watch garba.
    • Donation generated (100 x Rs 25,000 = Rs2500000)
    • Sponsorship usually starts from Rs 5 lakhs to Rs 10 lakhs and the revenue generated is nearly Rs  Rs4000000(approximately).
    • 35,000 to 40,000 participants attend United Way out of which 10,000 to 15,000 of are male participants and the rest are female participants.
      • Income generated from male participants (15,000 x Rs 2,500 = Rs 3,75,00,000)
      • 50% out of the female participants donate their security deposits (25,000 x Rs 200 = Rs 20,00,000)

Calculation

Total Approximate income Rs 4,88,00,000 (Approx)

Note: We have published this article just for the awareness with no intention to harm the image of any particular organization of person.This article can be taken as oppose for the Unexpected price hike in the Male pass rate.