Kolkata: With Durga puja, the biggest festival of West Bengal, knocking at the door, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) imposed in July has turned out to be a bane for the famous Kumartuli idol makers of Kolkata.
The artisans said, the new tax regime has created lot of confusion among them as well as customers as the new tax is difficult for them to understand and implement.
“This new tax regime is a still not clear. The prices of materials such as false hair, kajal, arms made of aluminium and steel, and sari have gone up. Due to this confusion in GST, customers’ budget on Durga idols have also come down this year,” spokesperson of Kumartuli Mritshilpa Sanskriti Samity Babu Pal told PTI. The existence of Kumartuli, a clay modellers colony in the northern part of the city by the Hooghly river, goes back to the 19th century.
According to the potters, the cost of clay and bamboo, required for making internal structure of idols, too has gone up. Ranajit Sarkar, who deals with raw materials needed for making idols, said, “We had faced a tough time last year due to demonetisation.
This year the GST is taking a heavy toll on our business and that too in the peak season,”.The peak season for idol makers starts from July when they start preperations for making Durga idols and continue till February - the time of Saraswati puja.
With the monsoon season in full swing, the potters need to use fans and heat guns to dry up the paints on the idols, but the possibility of higher electricity bills will also be worrying the artisans.
“Our profit margins will also be coming down to a large extent. What this would mean is that it would be tough time for our industry for the industry in the coming year,” Sarkar told PTI.
