Ahead of Durga Puja 2026 Kumartuli faces camera bans, clay shortages and new restrictions

Fame, it turns out, comes with its own costs. Kumartuli, Kolkata's centuries-old quarter of clay-idol makers, has been paying them for a while now. The visibility that has carried its craft to Canada, Germany, Italy and beyond has also brought a new kind of visitor into its narrow lanes, putting pressure on the measured, painstaking process behind every idol.

What’s changing in Kumartuli this Puja

Photography in Kumartuli has operated under a permission system for years. In 2022, the artisan association charged ₹50 for a month-long card or ₹100 for the full festival season, with proceeds going towards artisan welfare. By 2025, however, the system was buckling under the sheer volume of visitors arriving to create content. Influencers and vloggers came with scripted reels, hired photographers, costumed models, tripods and ring lights, sometimes turning working studios and narrow lanes into makeshift sets. Artisans complained of people filming without permission, obstructing their work and treating unfinished idols as backdrops. Even charging for access did little to control the crowds, with one artisan association eventually stopping the issue of permission cards altogether. During Chokkhu Daan, the ritual painting of the goddess's eyes, a separate no-exceptions photography ban was imposed. 

Reports of stricter and potentially costlier photography permissions for the 2026 season therefore arrive against a backdrop of mounting exasperation. For artisans, the issue is not necessarily the presence of cameras. Photographs and films have helped take Kumartuli's work far beyond Kolkata. The frustration lies in the assumption that access comes automatically, particularly when a crowded workshop, misplaced equipment or careless movement can interfere with idols still being made. 

This year brings its own complications, largely unrelated to cameras. A shortage of entel mati, the sticky riverbank clay essential to an idol's finishing layers, slowed work through May and June, after authorities began enforcing restrictions on digging soil from riverbanks. By July, a similar order had extended to bamboo — artisans were told they could no longer soak it in the river, part of the same riverbank-protection enforcement, even though soaking is what keeps an idol's bamboo frame from weakening over time. Perhaps in response to a season already testing patience, several puja organisers are reportedly favouring conventional shabeki idols over elaborate theme-based ones this year, though experimentation hasn't vanished entirely.

Meanwhile, Kumartuli itself is set to transform. A ₹10-crore redevelopment of its ghat — backed by an MoU between SMPA and Adani Ports, its heritage structures already repaired — promises walkways, boating and food courts by the time Puja arrives. Idols, too, continue travelling further than ever, with 2026 shipments confirmed to Uganda, Chicago, Dubai and New Zealand, fibreglass figures fetching upward of ₹3 lakh abroad.

Kumartuli, then, enters this Durga Puja caught between two directions at once — reaching further outward into the world even as it tries to keep the world at arm's length within its own lanes.

Email: anoushkakundu@newindianexpress.com

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