India, Aug. 18 -- Ahead of the Ganpati festival every year, Pen, a small town in Raigad district, comes alive with the clang of hammers and smell of wet clay as nearly 150,000 karigars or artisans labour over long hours, sculpting exquisite Ganpati idols and powering a Rs.350-crore economy.

This year, though, the rush is greater and the thousands of workshops in the town are in overdrive, with artisans working in double shifts to finish nearly 1.8 million idols ahead of August 25, when deliveries are expected to peak.

Usually, work on idols measuring more than 6 feet - which comprise a bulk of the orders and are made of Plaster of Paris (PoP) - starts in May. Nationalised banks extend loans of worth more than Rs.200 crore to artisans ev...