Shas­tri Boodan

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) is sat­is­fied with at­ten­dance at this year’s Di­vali Na­gar, which be­gan on Oc­to­ber 30 and end­ed on Sat­ur­day, de­spite so­cial me­dia crit­i­cism about night­ly crowd sizes.

NCIC pres­i­dent Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo ac­knowl­edged that at­ten­dance was low­er on some nights, par­tic­u­lar­ly Mon­day, when rain­fall af­fect­ed turnout. How­ev­er, he said over­all pa­tron­age was en­cour­ag­ing, with es­pe­cial­ly large crowds on Wednes­day and Thurs­day.

He added that at­ten­dance had ex­ceed­ed the av­er­age night­ly turnout in pre­vi­ous years.

The NCIC is al­ready con­sid­er­ing ways to add at­trac­tions for the 2027 cel­e­bra­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly on nights that tra­di­tion­al­ly draw small­er crowds, Man­ga­roo said.

One pro­pos­al is to re­vive the Queen’s Pageant, which at­tract­ed large au­di­ences be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The pageant is tra­di­tion­al­ly held on the penul­ti­mate night of Di­vali Na­gar, but Man­ga­roo said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was al­so ex­plor­ing oth­er ways to strength­en the night­ly pro­gramme.

The NCIC has in­tro­duced sev­er­al new at­trac­tions in re­cent years, in­clud­ing an evening show­cas­ing emerg­ing artistes. Man­ga­roo said Caribbean Night, which gives re­gion­al per­form­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take the stage, would re­turn in 2027.

He al­so point­ed to plans to mod­ernise some of the Na­gar’s the­mat­ic dis­plays, pos­si­bly by in­tro­duc­ing dig­i­tal pre­sen­ta­tions.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion has be­gun plan­ning for next year and will re­view its mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to at­tract new au­di­ences, Man­ga­roo said. The NCIC will con­sid­er pro­pos­als to pro­mote Di­vali Na­gar at points of en­try at least a month be­fore the event.

“This year we had vis­i­tors from Guade­loupe, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States. We want to broad­en our reach to oth­er di­as­po­ra na­tions,” he said.

Man­ga­roo al­so de­fend­ed the NCIC’s man­age­ment of the event, point­ing to the lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges of ac­com­mo­dat­ing large crowds.

He said the or­gan­i­sa­tion worked close­ly with the po­lice and fire ser­vices, hold­ing meet­ings months be­fore the Na­gar opened to plan for pub­lic safe­ty and crowd con­trol.

The NCIC spends more than $500,000 an­nu­al­ly on se­cu­ri­ty and po­lice arrange­ments, in­clud­ing off-du­ty of­fi­cers, Man­ga­roo said. He added that the or­gan­i­sa­tion was pleased with the co­op­er­a­tion it re­ceived from the emer­gency ser­vices.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing com­plaints about as­pects of the Na­gar, in­clud­ing ven­dor rental costs, Man­ga­roo said the pub­lic need­ed to un­der­stand the ex­pens­es in­volved in stag­ing the an­nu­al event.

He re­it­er­at­ed that the NCIC was sat­is­fied with this year’s turnout and in­tend­ed to build on the ex­pe­ri­ence when plan­ning the 2027 cel­e­bra­tions.

“We are very sat­is­fied with the crowd,” he said.