Yes, travel insurance is worth carrying for a trip to Kolkata, and the honest reasons are practical rather than dramatic: traffic-related injury, monsoon disruption, and the gap between what a policy assumes about local care and what actually happens if something serious occurs. Kolkata is one of India's largest cities, a genuine megacity by any measure, and its scale brings both the country's stronger private hospitals and its more chaotic street-level realities.
India's private hospital sector generally handles serious cases well in a city the size of Kolkata, though quality and cost vary between facilities, and a policy that covers direct billing at private hospitals matters more here than one built around reimbursement alone, since paying upfront for serious treatment can be a real burden. Confirm your policy names cashless or direct-billing arrangements specifically rather than assuming any hospital will accept your coverage automatically.
Road traffic in Kolkata, like many large Indian cities, is dense and can be genuinely hazardous for pedestrians and vehicle passengers alike, and this is a more common source of serious injury for visitors than anything exotic. Confirm your policy covers ambulance transport and emergency treatment specifically, since a traffic accident is a more realistic claim scenario here than illness. Monsoon season, roughly June through September, brings heavy rain and periodic waterlogging that can flood low-lying streets and disrupt transport across the city; trip-delay cover is worth checking if your visit falls within this window.
Keep hospital invoices, prescription receipts, and any police report if an accident is involved, since Indian providers generally issue standard paperwork on request. Check whether your existing health cover extends abroad and specifically to India before you travel, since many home plans and national schemes quietly stop at the border in a country whose systems can differ considerably by state. Confirm the claims process before you travel rather than after treatment has already started.