The fair’s brevity is strategic. Where Kolkata’s marathon tests stamina and working capital, Siliguri’s six-day window (compact even by Indian standards) enables focussed sell-through and rapid stock turn.
India’s book fair circuit typically sprawls across two week sessions, none of that three-days-and-exhausted nonsense we see in the western book fair arena. Kolkata’s flagship event commands 12–14 days with nearly 900 stalls and footfall exceeding two million.
Against that scale, Siliguri’s 15th Mahakuma Boi Mela represents the leaner, nimbler face of India’s regional publishing: 70 stalls, six trading days, and a sharp focus on North Bengal’s diverse readership.
Fair Specifications
Running 25–31 December at Baghajatin Park, the state-sponsored fair operates daily from 13:00 to 20:00. Seventy exhibitors – including Kolkata houses and local Siliguri publishers – will offer titles in Bengali, Hindi, English, Nepali and Rajbanshi. Arpita Sarkar attends as special guest; minister Siddiqullah Chowdhury inaugurated. A poets’ conference on 28 December features writer Mrinal Bandopadhyay.
Market Opportunity for Publishers
For trade visitors, the fair’s brevity is strategic. Where Kolkata’s marathon tests stamina and working capital, Siliguri’s six-day window (compact even by Indian standards) enables focussed sell-through and rapid stock turn.
The state’s Mass Education and Library Science department has committed institutional sales: primary libraries will purchase ₹18,000-worth of stock; town sub-division libraries ₹25,000; district libraries ₹45,000. These guaranteed orders provide a baseline revenue stream for smaller regional presses often overshadowed by Kolkata’s conglomerates.
Christmas Timing and Cultural Programming
The 25 December start date is deliberate – leveraging a public holiday to maximise opening-day footfall. Organisers have scheduled daily cultural programming: quiz and handwriting competitions, drawing contests, mathematical challenges and stage performances designed to pull families into the pitch.
Mayor Gautam Deb explicitly linked the fair to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s district-level cultural policy: “Since she became CM, such fairs have taken place across districts. Several languages have been given due importance, and people are returning to books again.”
Strategic Positioning
Siliguri sits at the junction of West Bengal, Sikkim and the north-eastern states – a distribution gateway for publishers aiming beyond the traditional Kolkata–Howrah corridor. The fair’s multilingual inventory reflects demographic reality, offering a live gauge of demand in border-zone markets.
For publishing professionals, it is a low-cost, high-intensity snapshot of regional consumption – a six-day pulse-check on what readers in the foothills actually buy.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
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