Kolkata’s Durga Puja pandals are increasingly being designed not only as cultural attractions but also as temporary public spaces that must accommodate people with different physical, sensory and social needs. This year, committees including Samajsebi Sangha, Kashi Bose Lane and Shibmandir Sarbojonin Durgotsav Samity have announced ramps, accessible entry points, wheelchairs, guides, Braille scripts, quiet spaces and organised visits for visually impaired and underprivileged children.
The changes are significant because a pandal is more than a structure viewed from the street. During the festival, it becomes a high-footfall public venue where people queue, move through narrow routes, interpret a theme, participate in rituals and spend time with family and neighbours. That experience can become difficult or impossible when access is designed around an assumed visitor who can walk long distances, read standard text, hear instructions clearly or tolerate crowded and noisy environments.
The initiatives reported from Kolkata suggest that some puja committees are beginning to treat inclusion as part of visitor infrastructure rather than as an additional service. At Samajsebi Sangha, whose theme marks the centenary of actor Mahanayak Uttam Kumar, organisers have created a separate entrance with an inclined platform and a wheelchair ramp. General secretary Arijit Maitra said the pathway would lead to every corner of the pandal so that disabled visitors could access the entire area. Guides would also escort visually impaired visitors around the venue.
That detail matters. A ramp at the entrance can remove one barrier, but it does not automatically make an entire public space accessible. Visitors may still encounter steps, uneven surfaces, congested passages, unclear routes or displays that cannot be experienced without sight. The promise that the accessible pathway will reach every corner addresses a broader question: whether inclusion is being considered across the visitor journey instead of being limited to the point of entry.
Kashi Bose Lane’s plan extends the idea from physical mobility to participation. The committee will provide Braille material from the entry point through the offering of Anjali and the chanting of stotras, according to general secretary Soumen Dutta. This is an attempt to make the religious and interpretive aspects of the puja available to visually impaired visitors, rather than treating them only as spectators who can be escorted through the site.
The distinction between access and participation is important in public-space design. A person may be able to enter a venue and still be excluded from its meaning, information or activities. Braille scripts cannot substitute for every form of support, and the report does not establish how many copies will be available, how they will be produced or whether other formats will be offered. But the measure shows an awareness that accessible design involves communication as well as movement.
The same committee is linking its theme to a book-collection initiative. It has begun collecting old books from neighbourhood homes for distribution among libraries and underprivileged children. Shivam Agarwal, head of marketing and strategy at Doctors’ Choice, which is supporting the initiative, said the programme aims to encourage the sharing of books and make the Durga Puja experience more inclusive. Visually impaired children taking part will receive copies of the Braille Durga Puja book.
This connects festival infrastructure with a wider community network. The pandal becomes a temporary point where cultural participation, neighbourhood donations, libraries and children’s access to reading material meet. The supplied report does not provide the number of books collected, libraries involved or children expected to benefit, so the scale of the programme cannot yet be assessed. Its institutional significance, however, lies in moving beyond a one-day visitor facility towards a community activity with a continuing social purpose.
At Shibmandir Sarbojonin Durgotsav Samity in Mudiali, organisers will arrange pandal visits for underprivileged children and visually impaired people on all puja days. The committee has tied up with a couple of organisations and runs a school for underprivileged children. Secretary Partha Ghosh said the school’s annual cultural programme would again mark the beginning of the celebrations. The pandal’s theme this year draws on Jaipur’s streetscape and the colours of Gangaur, Rajasthan’s spring festival.
Organised visits can solve a problem that physical infrastructure alone cannot. A ramp or guide is useful only when people know that the facility exists, can reach the venue safely and have a suitable time and group arrangement for the visit. Partnerships with organisations can help committees identify participants and coordinate access. At the same time, the report does not specify transport arrangements, group sizes, timings, emergency procedures or the training provided to volunteers. Those details determine how reliably an inclusion plan works on crowded festival days.
Durga Puja committees are not conventional municipal agencies. They create temporary structures, manage visitor flows and coordinate volunteers within neighbourhoods, often for a limited period. Yet their pandals function like public facilities during the festival. They have entrances, circulation paths, information systems, gathering areas and safety requirements. Their decisions therefore resemble small-scale urban design decisions, even when the structures are temporary and community-led.
This temporary character creates both an opportunity and a challenge. A permanent building may be governed by formal approval processes, technical standards and accessibility requirements. A festival pandal is assembled and dismantled within a shorter cycle, with design decisions often shaped by theme, available space, sponsorship and volunteer capacity. That can make universal access harder to institutionalise. It can also allow committees to test practical ideas quickly, such as escorted routes, accessible entrances or alternative formats for information.
The initiatives described in Kolkata should therefore be read neither as proof that the city’s public spaces are broadly accessible nor as isolated acts of charity. They are examples of community institutions responding to a visible gap in the experience of public life. The report does not say whether the arrangements follow a common citywide protocol, whether they have been independently assessed or how many other puja committees are making similar provisions. Those limitations are important because individual good practice does not automatically create consistent access across a city.
The evidence available here is qualitative. It identifies specific measures at three pujas and records statements from organisers, but it contains no figures on the number of disabled visitors, the total number of accessible pandals, visitor feedback, implementation costs or the proportion of venues offering such facilities. It also does not provide details of toilets, drop-off points, parking, public transport access, lighting, crowd management or emergency evacuation for disabled visitors. These are essential parts of the accessibility chain and remain unestablished in the supplied material.
Even without citywide data, the reported measures reveal how inclusion is being understood by different committees. Samajsebi Sangha is focusing on physical circulation and assistance for visually impaired visitors. Kashi Bose Lane is addressing accessible religious participation and reading material. Shibmandir is concentrating on organised access for children and visually impaired people through institutional partnerships. Together, these approaches show that inclusion has several dimensions: reaching a place, moving through it, understanding it and taking part in its activities.
That distinction has relevance beyond Durga Puja. Indian cities routinely host temporary markets, fairs, religious gatherings, exhibitions and street events. Such spaces can be central to urban culture while remaining difficult to navigate for wheelchair users, people with visual impairments, autistic visitors, older residents and children from disadvantaged households. The Kolkata examples raise a practical planning question: can accessibility become a standard part of event management rather than an optional feature adopted by individual organisers?
The answer cannot be established from this report alone. What is clear is that the committees have publicly identified barriers that are often overlooked when attention is concentrated on the visual spectacle of a pandal. A separate route, a guide, a Braille script, a quiet room or a planned group visit changes the event from a space that people are expected to negotiate on their own into one that acknowledges different forms of participation.
The next stage for Kolkata’s festival infrastructure would be to understand how these arrangements operate in practice. That would require information on reach, maintenance, volunteer training, visitor numbers, transport and feedback from the people the facilities are intended to serve. Until such evidence is available, the initiatives remain promising examples rather than proof of universal accessibility. Their immediate importance lies in showing that inclusion can be designed into a temporary public space when organisers treat access as part of the event itself.
