Sources at the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Mahamandal, organiser of the literary meets, said the corpus, whose target is to cover expenses of all future Marathi Sahitya Sammelans, has managed to collect only around Rs 70,000 so far. The amount is far from satisfactory, they said, considering that the last Sammelan's budget came close to Rs 1 crore.

The Mahamandal had floated the corpus after Thackeray publicly asked litterateurs to return the government's financial aid. The Mahakosh was expected to gather as much money as possible at the earliest, especially because soon after Thackeray's outburst, mayor Nandu Satam had stalled a grant of Rs 10 lakh from the BMC.Literature-loving people of Maharashtra were exhorted to donate to the corpus. The idea was to collect a big principal amount, on the interest of which meets could be organised and the state's financial support would not be needed. Sources at the Mahamandal said the money has been trickling in in ``rather small denominations like Rs 500 and Rs 1,000.'' The Mahamandal's president, Vasundhara Pendse-Naik, admitted the flow of contributions to the corpus was ``slow'' but added ``it is quite steady from simple, unquestioning people from all over the state. It is a continuous process which will take some time.''

To ease the financial pressure, some members of the Mahamandal had suggested that the literary meet be held once in two years and not annually.``No decision has been taken on this yet, but I have always felt literary meets should be organised in as simple a manner as possible. But more often than not, things depends on the host institution that has been give financial charge of the meet,'' saidPendse-Naik.