​Mela and melee: On the Maha Kumbh Mela 2025 and public safety Politics & News

The Maha Kumbh Mela that is ongoing in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, has showcased the gaping maw between the Centre’s and the State’s plans for such a large event and what they believe are sufficient resources to conduct it. Ahead of the mela, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and their cabinet colleagues had touted the special arrangements made for the mela, including a surveillance system equipped with artificial intelligence to track crowds, water filters to keep the rivers clean, a makeshift town replete with hospitals and special-purpose trains and buses. But they have not sufficed. There have been numerous reports of people being frustrated at the venue and during journeys to and from there. The mela’s under-management, simmering just below the surface, was transformed to outright mismanagement by the deaths of people in a crowd crush on January 29, 2025. The confused response by the Indian Railways to another crush at the New Delhi railway station, on February 15, 2025, indicated the Centre’s unwillingness to countenance the disaster, on the back of an expense of ₹7,500 crore for the mela and its various hi-tech preparations. Such preparations, however, cannot make up for changes that need to be made over time, such as redeveloping a local railway station.

Officials were reluctant to confirm that people had died even as local hospitals were confirming deaths. In one particularly unfair statement, a Deputy Commissioner of Police (Railways) blamed “unnecessary” rush at the New Delhi railway station for the “catastrophe”. The consensus among fire safety experts worldwide is that such events occur when there is external cause for a group to panic, whether lacking the money to buy another ticket should they miss a train or suffering injuries due to unsafe pedestrian conditions. A preliminary probe revealed that the Railways had sold 2,600 additional tickets, and an announcement at the station of the arrival of a different train rendered this confused mass of passengers to attempt to reach the wrong platform. The Railways has now said that special trains for the mela will depart from one fixed platform at the station. Such interventions that are already well known to experts — including clear, multilingual communications, restricted ticketing, and proactive crowd control — could have mitigated the tragedy. Many less prominent gathering places still lack attention vis-à-vis public safety. Both the Centre and States should eliminate these risks, post-haste, if the Centre’s plans to increase footfall at places of worship are not to lead to more catastrophe. While encouraging spiritual tourism, the hype around hosting 45 crore people at the Maha Kumbh Mela, absurdly impossible as it sounds, should be toned down so as not to feed a political frenzy. The governments must be careful that the cost of fulfilling political aspirations is not paid for in terms of human lives.