The Industry of Idol Making in Kolkata - A Survey in the Light of UNESCO Recognition

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Authors of Paper: Chaitali Sinha (chai_sinha@yahoo.co.in), Tuhina Mazumdar, Supriya Dutta, Shrabani Saha (Lincoln International Business School, Lincoln, England, ssaha@lincoln.ac.uk)

The study is grounded in firsthand accounts from craftspeople working in Kumortuli (North Kolkata) and Kalighat Poto Para (South Kolkata), using questionnaires + interviews, carried out before Durgotsav (2021–2022) in September–October.

Durga Puja as an annual “city-making” event

• Durga Puja is described as a form of temporary urban transformation where the neighborhood becomes a public cultural landscape: sacred iconography, ritual, folk/cultural events, installations, and even an “imagined” layer of space coexist with daily life

• The festival also functions like an open public art season. Even though it is short-lived, it produces lasting civic memory, linking space, time, and cultural identity in a way the authors describe as the city’s sense of “cityness.”

"Public events are the key to the life of a city. These acts, though temporary, occur for a short duration of time, yet create and sustain the memory of the city’s association with space, culture, and time. This relationship embodies the unique ‘cityness'."

Why UNESCO recognition matters (and what it recognizes)

• Kolkata’s Durga Puja is on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) list, framed as recognition not only of devotion, but of the festival’s role in sustaining traditional arts and crafts, community well-being, and livelihoods connected to cultural production.

• The same passage places Durga Puja alongside other Indian ICH elements such as Kumbh Mela, Chau dance, Sankirtana, Yoga, and Ramlila.

Historical trajectory (why Kumortuli becomes central)

• The paper frames Durga Puja as something that changed in stages. One key shift: it began as ceremonies hosted by landed elites before becoming embedded in broader public life.

• On origins, the authors cite one line of information tracing clay-model traditions back to King Jagat Malla of the Malla dynasty in Vishnupur (they write “10th century BC”).

• Kumortuli’s formation is tied to colonial urban change: potters moved for work, and displacement associated with the building of Fort William pushed settlement patterns toward what became the potters’ quarter known as Kumortuli.

• The paper also notes the first recorded Durga Puja in Calcutta (1610), hosted by Zamindar Sabarna Choudhury, and links elite celebrations to increased demand for clay idols and idol-makers.

Labor and migration: a seasonal system with real risk

• Idol-making relies on inter-state and intra-state migration, including rural/semi-urban districts in Bengal (Nadia, Birbhum, Bankura, North 24 Parganas, Midnapore, Hooghly) and states like Bihar, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh.

• The study states 58% of workers are temporarily employed, which creates seasonal unemployment and pushes people into other work (construction labor, agriculture, other pottery) in the off-season.

• A recent shift is also noted: fewer workers are migrating to Kumortuli from faraway places, because more locally accessible work near home is available.

The puja economy: huge scale, many linked industries

• The paper cites an estimate of the puja economy at ~Rs. 25,000 crores (2013) with ~35% compound annual growth; and for 2019, an estimate of Rs. 32,377 crores for the creative industries around the festival.

• It also reports that the festival contributed 2.58% of West Bengal’s GDP, and notes Kolkata’s share in the pandal-making industry

• Beyond idol-making, the “creative economy” described includes a wider ecosystem (pandals, lighting/illumination, publishing, food and beverage, retail, advertising, tourism, etc.).

Supply chains: the craft is also an infrastructure network

• The idol economy depends on a well-established supply chain: bamboo, hay bundles (from multiple districts), clay sourced from rivers such as the Ganges and Rupnarayan, and decorative materials like daker saj sourced from places such as Krishnanagar (Nadia).

Gender and social change inside the workshops

• The industry is described as male-dominated, with ~37% women workers, and the paper emphasizes that women’s participation is rising over time.

• It highlights women who stepped into leadership roles in Kalighat idol-making, including Piu Pal (managing a team of ~20 workers) and Kajol Pal continuing family craft with labor support.

• Many Kumortuli studios are described as multi-generational, with some businesses reported as over 200 years old.

Fragility: costs, weather, and the next generation problem

• The study links declining continuity to structural conditions: low pay, long hours, and crowded studio life make younger generations look elsewhere, and many artisans would prefer their children not enter the profession.

• Weather becomes an economic pressure: rain can increase production costs by ~15–20% due to fuel used for drying and added materials like tarpaulin and plastic sheets.

• The paper notes a major continuity gap: only ~20% of artisans already have children in the profession, while ~66% want their children to choose other work.

• One response from within the community is skill transmission: the paper mentions Mala Pal running a Pathshala to teach idol-making to young people.

Environmental pressures and material shifts

• The industry faces scrutiny for solid waste from production and for river pollution during immersion due to paints/varnishes that harm humans and aquatic ecosystems.

• A shift is mentioned toward fiberglass idols (lighter, framed as avoiding corrosive chemicals), but they are costly and largely made for export markets.

This research helped me see Kumortuli as a neighborhood that runs on a seasonal pulse. The population swells and thins with the festival cycle, and that rhythm mirrors how the city itself changes during Puja as labor, buyers, and visitors arrive and leave. It highlights how a locality temporarily reorganizes space into a shared public environment, where work, ritual, and movement overlap. How can I map this pulse over the course of a year?

I also came away thinking about continuity as something spatial and domestic. The mention of the Pathshala matters because it shows that the craft is passed on through daily exposure, not only through formal instruction. Children and families living around the studios become part of the system that keeps knowledge alive. That makes me want to look closely at what family life looks like inside these workspaces, how roles get distributed, and when young people start stepping away from the craft.

The material chain is another takeaway that feels central to my thesis. Idol-making depends on a sequence of stages and inputs that arrive from many places, then have to be stored, dried, assembled, and finished within tight time windows. I want to map where each activity happens, where materials enter the neighborhood, how they move through it, and where space becomes a constraint. I also want to map the moments that formalize continuity, like the Pathshala, and the moments that reveal fragility, like labor shortages, seasonal downtime, and the waste produced through making and disposal. This is where my thesis starts to take shape: culture is an urban system with infrastructure, logistics, and governance needs, and design has to treat it as such.

Aside into design: Can I design housing developments which make space for the pandal during the festival, but also the production workshops in the other months? Could I design smaller, human scale interventions which work with existing infrastructure?