Odisha, in 2025, stands at a historic confluence. Its cultural wellspring — Bali Jatra, Kartika Purnima, Boita Bandana — remains alive, not as romantic nostalgia but as the DNA of an emergent maritime vision. The state’s port-led industrial economy and blue tourism drive are not divergences from its past but direct continuations, realising anew what the Sadhabas understood: greatness comes from openness, adaptability, and integration of land, sea and people.

On the luminous night of Kartik Purnima, thousands of paper boats carrying flickering lamps are set afloat on rivers across Odisha. The people do not merely celebrate a festival, they invoke a civilisational memory. Bali Jatra commemorates the voyages of Kalinga’s uniquely enterprising seafarers who once sailed to Java, Sumatra, Bali,

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