It is hard to get even a small group of people – say a family or a close bunch of friends – to agree on things sometimes, let alone an entire city like Shillong.

So, the state government may be forgiven for trying to ignore the numerous complaints of the recent Cherry Blossom Festival because it must be obvious – you can’t please everyone.

Festivals, concerts and the like are big business. The state government has repeated several times that the Cherry Blossom Festival last year generated an economic boost of Rs 60 crore, which seems, on the face of it, well worth the government expense of Rs 5 crore. Whether those figures are actually independently verified and audited, we don’t know.

What was the main bugbear this year was the noise. And the traffic.

The first Cherry Blossom Festival

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