The Bengal government’s decision to observe the Raksha Bandhan festival this year after a two-year hiatus following the Covid-19 outbreak has brought a smile on the face of hundreds of women associated with making rakhis, the bands that symbolise the bonds of brotherhood.

Raksha Bandhan or Rakhi falls on August 11 this year and the state government has announced a public holiday on that day.

Kalna Weavers and Artisans Welfare Society — a rakhi-making cluster in East Burdwan’s Kalna —received an order of 6.5 lakh pieces of rakhis from the state government’s cultural departments after a gap of two years.

“We did not receive any rakhi order from the state government in the past two years and hence faced a bad time as ours is a seasonal business. This year we received rakhi orders from the government and are really happy,” said Saraswati Acharya, a rakhi-maker of Kalna.

“Although we work with private orders, the order from the state government is very important as it is huge. We have 300 women working with our society who get a good amount of income from the government order,” said Tapan Modak, secretary of the rakhi cluster.After coming to power in Bengal, chief minister Mamata Banerjee introduced Rakhi as a mandatory festival in the government calendar to spread the message of brotherhood the way Rabindranath Tagore used to celebrate it.Tagore used the festival to protest against the partition of Bengal in 1905 by tying rakhi threads to convey the message of unity and brotherho od among Hindus and Muslims.The state government started procuring lakhs of rakhis from various manufacturing clusters for use in government offices, police stations and other government institutions. Every year, police personnel come on roads with bunches of blue rakhis to tie on passers-by.The outbreak of Covid-19 in Bengal in March 2020 led the state government to put on hold this celebration. This had hit rakhi manufacturers.

“In the past two years, we did not order rakhis during the pandemic as physical distancing was a protocol. In 2020, a complete lockdown was clamped and there was no question of observing the annual event. This year the situation is better and the government has decided to resume the public celebration,” said a senior state government official.

Apart from Kalna, many clusters in south Bengal districts are involved in manufacturing of rakhis. Sources said the demand for rakhis increased after Mamata started observing the Rakhi festival as a public celebration cutting across religious lines.