Infrastructural woes plague Kumartuli’s famous idol-sculptors as Kolkata North goes to the polls in final phase

As the Lok Sabha seat goes to the polls in the last phase of the election, the idol sculptors of Kumartuli are disgruntled by long-standing infrastructural woes

The Kolkata North parliamentary constituency is home to some of the oldest parts of the metropolis, including Kumartuli, known globally for its age-old tradition of modelling clay idols, especially of the ten-handed goddess for the annual, carnivalesque celebration of Durga Puja. However, as the Lok Sabha seat goes to the polls in the last phase of the election on June 1, the idol sculptors of Kumartuli are disgruntled by long-standing infrastructural woes.

“When it rains, water drips through our roofs. The streets get waterlogged. But our work cannot stop,” lamented 50-year-old Rajat Pal (name changed), a third-generation sculptor at Kumartuli. “It is getting very difficult to keep working like this.”

On Tuesday, a day after the city experienced the devastating aftermath of Cyclone Remal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducted his North Kolkata road-show in support of the constituency’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Tapas Roy. Contesting against him is the incumbent Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandopadhyay, and the Congress’ Pradip Bhattacharya, among others. 

“Who is looking after us? Nobody cares what happens to the idol sculptors of Kumartuli. No one is talking about it,” lamented Mr. Pal. 

He started his idol-sculpting journey as a child assisting his father, and said that the working and living conditions of Kumartuli have been the bane of the sculptors for as long as he can remember. “We are sculpting idols of gods and goddesses, and yet our work environment is dirty, dingy, and damaged,” Mr. Pal said, adding that Kumartuli’s fragile, dilapidated infrastructure falls apart during harsh weather conditions and makes it difficult for the sculptors to work properly. 

Adding to the area’s infrastructure woes is a severe lack of space both inside the modelling studios, and outside. According to Tapan Ghosh, who has been working in Kumartuli for nearly a decade, even the most spacious workshops in the area are too cramped for the demands of the trade. The thatched studios of Kumartuli house both idols and the people who make them — migrant workers who come from different parts of Bengal to work there during the peak season. Many workshops are not tall enough to accommodate the larger idols, compelling the sculptors to take them out on the streets, crowding into the already–cramped lanes of the area. “After the work is done, even taking the finished idols out of the workshop and safely loading them on trucks is a struggle,” Mr. Ghosh told The Hindu.

The panacea for Kumartuli’s infrastructure woes was, however, conceived more than a decade ago. “The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government had planned to move the clay-modelling workshops out of Kumartuli and into well-built, spacious studios in Bagbazar in North Kolkata,” Babu Paul, secretary of the Kumartuli Mritshilpo Sanskritik Samiti, explained.