Opinion Drawing near in faith

Their next big test comes in 2013 at Allahabad,which is projected to be the largest-ever gathering of human beings.

The biggest help for crowd management is,however,the fact that a large part of the action happens on an open-air riverbank. Thus the police and the district officials can work out every possible detail of an elaborately tented religious town well before the pilgrims arrive.

But within a vast number of living cities,that sort of luxury is not available. Yet the crowds are mounting — and rapidly — at the must-do religious points in these towns,keeping pace with income growth. As a result,many of these centres are morphing into a gridlock of disasters. Each season the crowds mount,and the facilities slip an inch further behind the minimum required. Almost all readers would have experienced this first-hand at their favourite religious festival.

The problem has been classically compounded by urban planning in India,which has atrophied in a supposed “secular” model that takes no cognisance of this ground reality. This means no town authority makes any provision for any religious structure in most areas. In those rare instances when they have,they have shown no understanding of how pilgrim traffic flows. It was even thought that a rush of pilgrims would dissipate once urbanisation crossed a threshold — but,obviously,as the swelling crowds at all venues show,the planners just did not understand the Indian population.

So,for instance,in and around Diwali in northern India and Ganesh Chaturthi in western and southern India,the towns get seized up. It becomes worse in the temple towns,where the easy access provided by fast inter-city highways now quadruples the traffic pouring into them within hours. The problem is that there are no escape routes possible at any of the sites. A disaster on any scale is just therefore round the corner,and can become a reality very fast.

In fact,the gathering crowd phenomenon is not just restricted to religious functions. Most big hotels in Delhi and Mumbai,reserve portions of public road next to them to park the cars of their visitors. On special days,the roads are barred for others.

These events may not be just problems — they could be used as solutions,too. The first thing is to integrate the building of public structures into town planning. No religious structure in any Indian city has ever travelled the full range of sanctions. Sometimes the process doesn’t exist; sometimes pieces of notifications are created to justify a structure after it has been built. Indeed,it is difficult to think of a single place where urban Indians converge in large numbers with their families that has run the full gauntlet of clearances. How could it? If it had tried to,it would never have come up in the first place. This short-circuiting results in all sorts of temples,bazaars and others existing cheek-by-jowl. Similarly,there are no agreed procedures for something as basic as parking one’s car in public places.

It is these gaps that create the template for an accident or a stampede. To that extent what happened in Sabarimala,despite its forest setting,is an urban Indian story gone wrong.

The solutions have to therefore take the urban milieu into that context. Otherwise the stampede in the Kerala hills will reinforce the impression of an India unable to fix its broken-down infrastructure. Since nothing we do in India will be tucked away in a corner of the global news index any more,it is possibly in our own interest that we make this a national priority and start learning the right lessons fast.

With India already home to about 50 cities with a million-plus population,this will be one of our biggest challenges. While religious bodies have to show a far better understanding of crowd management,it can be a nice opportunity to force the general population into experiencing the virtues of public transport. In cities like Amritsar and Mathura,personal vehicles should be a no-no for long distances.

Just as the Kumbh example shows,the good examples are

often available from within the country. These include building wide roads with a network of slip roads to move people fast to and from the venues,clearing congestion near the temples — and so many others,all of which make for good town sense.

While there are many options available,implementing them will of course require working at the huge egos of competing state-level bureaucracies. This could look insurmountable,but the challenge will only get more difficult as we let it slip. Obviously,harnessed well,these are wonderful opportunities to push investment — but whichever way one looks at it,the classical approach of pushing in more policemen with lathis,will only worsen the problem the next time round.

The writer is Executive Editor (News),‘The Financial Express’ subhomoy.bhattacharjee@expressindia.com