Alleged closure of some exits for VIP movement stopped thousands of pilgrims in their tracks, as they streamed from their air-conditioned tents for devil stoning ritual during the recently-concluded haj on September 24. Minutes later, panic sparked a crushing stampede as crowds found themselves trapped, killing over 700 pilgrims from 34 countries. This was the deadliest accident near Mecca in 25 years and the second tragedy that struck during this year’s haj after a crane collapse killed 100 people two weeks earlier.
The twin tragedies have raised serious questions about Saudi Arabia’s ability to oversee safer pilgrimage, which is celebration of equality before God subsuming racial, sectarian, economic and national divides. They have rightly prompted vociferous calls for internationalising arrangements for it citing Riyadh’s poor crowd management and know-how. That 100,000 cops were deployed to manage the hajj but were found unsuitably trained and unable to communicate with majority of foreign pilgrims was a case in point. This compounded the lack of crowd control.
Saudi Arabia’s inability to prevent such tragedies as a result despite its far superior resources and infrastructure is striking. It is no rocket science to successfully hold much larger congregations, for all that is needed is better leadership and organisation to achieve this. It is not about building the world’s largest hotel, renovating or expanding bridges and roads but about organizing crowds better. This was clear when Allahabad hosted the world’s largest religious — Kumbh Mela — in January 2013. An estimated 70 million faithful, roughly equalling populations of cities like New York, participated in the Kumbh in comparison to just a fraction — two million — who attended this year’s haj.
The stampede incidentally happened outside five-storey Jamarat Bridge that erected a few years back to enhance safety at the cost of around $10 billion. Likewise, Saudi Arabia has over the years spent billions on expanding facilities for hajj pilgrims at the cost of precious heritage that has been mindlessly been destroyed. In comparison, authorities had just a three-month window to put together infrastructure for a temporary tented city for Kumbh made of ropes, bamboo, nails, screws canvas, corrugated metal etc. Authorities raced against time when the Ganga waters began receding in October 2012 to build the infrastructure. When the Kumbh commenced, 156-km of road, 18 temporary bridges, 770-km of electricity had been laid on war footing for the event. This was done along with putting up 20,000 water tap connections, 40 tube wells, and 425,000 toilets for the pilgrims besides deploying 12,461 cops for policing the pilgrims to bathe in the icy cold waters at the Ganga and Yamuna rivers confluence.
The temporary city comes up every 12 years at the confluence for millions of faithful at the site, which is normally inaccessible till the end of monsoon season in October. Building it requires delicate understanding of disciplines such as urban planning and public health. And those involved did a splendid job despite meagre resources and paucity of time. A team of Harvard University experts that fanned out during the Kumbh, exploring urban planning, religious practices, public health and environmental impact during the event have endorsed it.
The experts analysed data from the Kumbh and recently published their findings, calling it “a leadership and organisational success by any measure’’. The report noted the atmosphere at the Kumbh, considered to be “the foremost place of sacrifice”, was “fast moving and highly dynamic’’, which would normally “be a ripe breeding ground for confusion”. But the experts did not see “hunger, uncontrolled fire, significant communicable disease outbreaks, nor major stampedes’’. The report has blamed the Indian railways and “the subcontinent’s pervasive lack of a queuing culture” for a stampede at Allahabad railway station on the eve of the Kumbh’s most auspicious bathing ritual.
Despite this blemish, the report attributed the Kumbh’s success “to constrained and selective government involvement, as compared to ubiquitous intervention”, something the Saudis can take note of. The hajj stampede has been linked to preferential treatment given to Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud’s at the tragedy scene. The stampede was reported to have been caused after one-way traffic directions were reversed to allow the prince and his entourage to get through.
In contrast the Harvard report, which describes the Kumbh as an unprecedented ecumenical event of its scale, highlighted such “random intervention by politicians and the government’’ was avoided during the Hindu pilgrimage. The random interventions are otherwise common in India and hamper organizational work. Consequently, iconic ex-BBC India correspondent Mark Tully, who has covered several Kumbh Melas, has called the Harvard report “particularly gratifying’’ as “India is not known for organisation’’ and Uttar Pradesh, where Allahabad is located, is “renowned for ineffectiveness’’. In a newspaper column, Tully called India “no stranger to confusion’’ and added “that is why the much-talked-of jugaad, muddling through or miraculously rescuing a situation at the last moment is so common’’. He cited the Harvard report and said the Kumbh “was a carefully planned and efficiently executed operation’’.
The iconic journalist recalled his reporting on the last three Allahabad Kumbhs and added he has noticed “a marked difference between the normal behaviour of the police and the behaviour of those handling the pilgrims’’. He wrote this seemed to be a major factor in the orderliness of the pilgrims, something that was allegedly lacking among the haj pilgrims in the face of haughty Saudi attitude.
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