They The People Deserve More

Saturday night’s stampede at New Delhi station – 18 travellers to Prayagraj were killed – should give the political leadership cause for introspection. Maha Kumbh, which comes once in 144 years, has given BJP lots of political mileage. It cannot, therefore, shy away from showing greater contrition over the loss of life in the Delhi stampede and other Kumbh-related tragedies.First, we had the stampede in the mela area on Jan 29. How many were killed is still not clear. Many have also died in road accidents involving Kumbh travellers. We have dismissed these as road-related fatalities, rather than Kumbh-related, but we cannot be inured to tragedy so much that we no longer care.Boilerplate govt statements offering condolence, compensation and official inquiries will not suffice if ministers appear more keen to avoid political blame than to care for those who have lost family and friends.A caveat is in order here. No amount of planning can prevent human panic responses. Mecca, which gets millions of Haj and Umrah pilgrims every year, has seen six mass stampedes over the last 25 years. At the worst of these, in 2015, more than 2,000 people were killed.When your correspondent took the holy dip on Feb 5, he did not see any laxity on the part of Yogi govt, in both preventative measures and preparations for various eventualities. The fact that two fires – one preceded the stampede – were put out without loss of lives or even injuries also suggests the state govt has been proactive.Some 3-4mn people visited Maha Kumbh on Feb 5, which also happened to be the day Modi came for a dip at the Sangam, and movement restrictions were in place. On the most auspicious snan dates, perhaps 10mn could have turned up.When 400mn people land up near a small riverfront over 45 days, you need miracles to ensure total safety. Tragedies will happen despite best efforts, and the best govts can do is to learn from mistakes and deal empathetically with the aftermath.For example, apart from just announcing compensation for victims’ families, can senior officials personally visit them, and ensure the money is duly paid to heirs? Or will the family be forced to run around for months to get the money? Can officials and ministers stop focusing on blame deflection, and show they are dealing with a human tragedy? Opposition has begun fishing in troubled waters, but govts ought to rise above politics, even if it temporarily draws attention to their (likely) failures.Even an angry public will not fail to recognise the efforts of a govt that shows genuine human concern and an attitude of helping. During Covid’s Delta wave, when many were gasping for breath in Delhi and lakhs died, the Modi govt showed better response times and caring attitudes towards victims. No one today accuses it of sleeping on the job, even though it received flak at the time.The lessons for the future, apart from empathy for victims and their families, are threefold.* First, a chain is only as good as its weakest link. When a massive event like Maha Kumbh is to take place, you cannot be prepared for accidents only in the mela area or the Prayagraj region. You have to think what can go wrong from every point in the pilgrim supply chain, from train and bus stations to traffic management on highways, and even sabotage attempts by anti-nationals. Hotels, restaurants and other service providers, looking to cash in on the rush, could also have been weak links in the chain as rates went through the roof.* Second, crowd trends are not uniform because Hindus seek to participate in holy dips or pujas on auspicious days. The enormous peaks and troughs require agile management. Tirupati, which has a good crowd management system, saw a stampede for festival tickets in early Jan, killing six devotees.The poor also tend to combine one pilgrimage with another (nowhere in the world are pilgrimage tours as popular as in India) since they cannot afford multiple trips. Ayodhya and Varanasi have drawn record crowds over the last one month and managing them was not easy even though Ayodhya has a very good crowd management system.Several times during the past few weeks, roads to Prayagraj, Ayodhya and Kashi were choked, with traffic barely moving for hours. The crowds paid with time the costs they could not pay in cash. At a Hanuman temple in Prayagraj on Feb 5, the crowds were crushing, but many Indians aren’t the kind to deny themselves a closer darshan of Hanumanji, even if that puts them at risk of getting crushed.* Third, we must use AI and other tools to estimate where and how accidents could happen, and deploy rapid response teams to handle the fallout when crowd behaviour leads to panic and tragedy. Most deaths in the New Delhi stampede were from asphyxiation, which suggests any help that takes more than a few minutes to arrive will be useless. More than anti-terror squads, we need special crowd management and medical relief squads near high-traffic holy sites.It is time for the BJP leadership to look within and awaken a sense of humanity that may guide it in future when tragedies happen unexpectedly. Taking some of the blame on the chin will improve its credibility as a Hindu party, not deflate it.