Alongside its traditional household observance, Gudi Padwa has become the occasion for large public processions in Maharashtra's cities, most visibly Mumbai's annual Shobha Yatra, a procession of decorated floats, traditional dancers, martial arts demonstrations and music that draws large crowds through the streets of the city and has grown substantially in scale and organisation over recent decades, run by community and cultural organisations rather than by any religious authority.
The public procession has also carried, at times, an explicitly regional and political dimension, with Marathi cultural and political organisations using the occasion to assert and celebrate Maharashtrian identity, a dimension separate from and additional to the private household rituals of raising the gudi and the neem-jaggery taste that remain the festival's core religious observance, illustrating how the same new year occasion can function simultaneously as a quiet domestic ritual behind closed doors and as a large, publicly visible expression of regional identity in the streets outside.
A further custom kept alongside the raising of the gudi is Panchang Shravan, the ceremonial reading aloud of the new year's panchang, the Hindu almanac, in temples and community gatherings; astrologers and priests use the occasion to set out the coming year's planetary movements, auspicious dates and general predictions for the community, giving Gudi Padwa a forward-looking almanac reading alongside its domestic rituals of cleaning, rangoli and the neem-jaggery taste.