Kumartuli or Kumortuli is located in the northern part of the city of Kolkata . The locality is a traditional habitat of the potters for nearly three hundred years. The potters or the artisans or the artists settled here during the restructuring of the Kolkata colonial region by the British East India Company . Earning a livelihood by making earthen pots and utensils first they gradually shifted to the making of the idols of Gods and Goddesses for various festivals round the year. With increasing demand and quality of their creations over time the artisans became famous and Kumartuli came to be known as the hub of idol makers supplying thousands of idols, particularly of Goddess Durga , to whole of the state of West Bengal and to NRIs of around 90 countries across the globe. At least three months before Durga Puja , the biggest festival of West Bengal and one of the biggest across Eastern India, more than five hundred workshops come alive with hyper activity day and night. Fir...
Three power grids in northern, eastern and north eastern India collapsed around noon today plunging 20 states and 2 Union Territories of India in darkness. The northern grid collapsed yesterday putting almost whole of north India into darkness. The situation instead of improving worsened today with all three grids linking 22 states collapsing . Six hundred million people, half of Indian population, had been affected. The astonishing part of this massive failure was that nobody knew exactly why it happened. Even those in 'power' did not know why half of the nation became powerless! Some of the blame had been given to few states for overdrawing power from the affected grids. Putting a stop to a possible start of the blame game the new Minister of Power said that the power situation had to be managed better for development of the country. In fact, in a major cabinet reshuffle today P Chidambaram, the erstwhile Home Minister, was given the Finance portfolio; Sushil Kumar Shinde...