A week after Kolkata’s Red Road staged its dazzling immersion carnival (Oct 5), North Bengal is still counting losses from the cloudburst-driven floods and landslides that began on Oct 4. The official toll has risen to at least 42, as restoration teams race to reopen roads and bridges. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has toured the affected districts multiple times since, saying the state “cannot keep waiting for the Centre” and will press its own resources for relief. The ever-volatile political lens in an election-bound state like Bengal is now focused on the Durgapur rape case and on whether Mamata resorted to victim-shaming or was she misquoted. However, what did take place with her full support was the Durga Puja carnival, even as one part of the state was limping from floods, and the jury is still out on whether it should have gone ahead.One half of the TV screen showed the Red Road Carnival, a mélange of lights, drummers, idols and beaming organisers marching past Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, celebrities, diplomats and visitors from across the country and abroad. The other half showed the fury of nature with tea gardens under water, bridges snapped, fields gone. The camera cut between both frames as if the state were arguing with itself. It also strengthened a long-standing opposition narrative: that northern Bengal does not get the same attention as the south.But people who have known Bengal long enough would tell you there is no contradiction, despite the apparent tone-deafness of festivities and celebrities taking a jig with the Chief Minister even as fellow citizens suffered. The carnival had to go on. Because this is not a state where faith and economy take turns. They work the same shift.

Durga Puja stopped being merely a five-day festival long ago. It’s now an industry that does the heavy lifting during Durga Maa’s homecoming. The state government has done its part to amp up the festivity offering a ₹ 1.10-lakh honorarium to 40,000 puja pandals, tax breaks for government facilities, and an 80 % concession on electricity bills. The British Council’s benchmark study (2019) valued the festival’s creative economy idols, lighting, décor, music and craft at ₹ 32,377 crore, about 2.6 % of Bengal’s GSDP. Add the spill-overs of retail, transport, hotels, food and media, and the number now touches around ₹ 65,000 crore in 2025, according to The Times of India estimates.Roughly 70 % of that funnels through Kolkata, the only city of metropolitan scale in West Bengal. The Times of India report says nearly ₹ 45,000 crore of total spending happens in and around the city across creative work, retail, hospitality and advertising. The British Council paper, meanwhile, shows that the “creative industries” segment alone contributes about half the total, covering idol-making, illumination, décor, performance and art. The rest flows through retail, food, tourism, logistics and temporary employment.So when North Bengal went under water, Kolkata still prepared for the final act not from indifference, but from a sense of duty. Like Noah’s ark, the city kept its rituals afloat while the waters rose elsewhere.

Bengal’s factory gates have rusted over decades. The industrial flight that began in the 1980s never truly reversed. Political cycles changed, but capital didn’t return in volume.In the last decade, the state’s average real GSDP growth has hovered around 4.3 %, below India’s 5.6 % average, according to a NITI Aayog summary (2025). Bengal’s share in national GDP has slipped to about 5.6 % roughly half of what it was in the 1960s, as the EAC-PM’s State GDP Working Paper (2024) shows. Its per-capita income now stands at around 84 % of the national average.In that vacuum, culture has become the leading light of commerce. Puja season acts as Bengal’s annual stimulus, keeping unorganised sectors and MSMEs afloat. Every artisan, tailor, lightman, cook and worker in the blue-collar economy earns their year’s worth during the festive months.

The Red Road Carnival, launched in 2016, was meant as a soft-power showcase. very much in line with Mamata Banerjee’s politics, where narrative-setting often takes precedence. It has since become a televised audit of Bengal’s creative economy. Districts hold their own carnivals a day earlier, with the grand finale reserved for the capital.This year, 113 pujas of repute and, some say, those close to the ruling regime rolled past the Chief Minister, diplomats and cameras, each allotted two to three minutes. About 35,000 people watched from the stands. To outsiders, it was a parade. To insiders, it was the closing bell of a ₹ 65,000-crore ledger.

Mamata’s candid take

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s defence regarding not calling off the Carnival was direct and, in her words, practical. “What could I have done that day?” she asked reporters. “The administration needs time to begin work after such a disaster. The carnival was planned months in advance, it represents West Bengal’s culture and unity. I went to North Bengal the next morning,” she was quoted as saying.She later called the event “the pride of Bengal,” adding that she would not “insult” artisans and organisers by walking away at the last moment. The Opposition, though, found in it a convenient stick to beat the government with. BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari said the Chief Minister “preferred pomp over pain,” while the Congress too criticised the decision. The Left added that Nabanna’s priorities had turned “from policy to parade.”Much of what Kolkata displayed that evening, clay from Kumartuli, fibre work from Howrah, fabric from South 24 Parganas had been crafted long before the floods hit the North. The devastation was hundreds of kilometres away, but the contrast was cruel. Local reporters in Jalpaiguri quoted teachers and volunteers watching the parade on mobile screens with exasperation, not anger, just exhaustion. The Puja economy is urban and visible; the flood economy, rural and unseen. The same electricity that lights pandals often fails the homes that make them.

According to the British Council study, Durga Puja supports roughly 700,000 people directly or indirectly. The Times of India estimate places Kolkata’s contribution at nearly ₹ 45,000 crore of the total, fuelling retail, hospitality and advertising.This year, despite overall growth, traditional markets saw an estimated 20 % slump in earnings due to heavy September rains. A further dent would have hit the entire ecosystem from float fabricators to performers now dependent on the carnival’s completion. The deeper challenge remains the same: translating cultural success into industrial strength. As national data show, Bengal’s real growth lags India’s by about a percentage point a year. Until that gap narrows, festivals and services will keep doing the heavy lifting.Bengal doesn’t cancel symbols; it curates them. Since UNESCO recognised Kolkata’s Durga Pujaas world heritage in 2021, the carnival has doubled as diplomacy, a postcard to investors and expats alike. Pulling the plug would have meant admitting fragility in a state that trades on resilience.And resilience, let’s face it, is Bengal’s biggest calling card. Record rain one week, carnival the next. As Camus wrote of his own besieged city, “there is more to admire in men than to despise.”

Postscript

By nine that night, the last float rolled past Fort William. Petals clung to wet asphalt. The city exhaled. Up North, relief convoys were still finding bridges. For a few hours, Kolkata danced as if nothing was wrong. Maybe it needed to. Because in a state where manufacturing has thinned and investment limps, celebration has become a form of production.Maa Durga left, the flood stayed, and Bengal kept time to its own contradiction — guilty, proud, unrepentant. Here, the show doesn’t just go on. The show is the economy. That’s the uneasy truth a split screen revealed

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