Sangam surprise

Glitch-free Kumbh reveals India's flawed urban planning

The world's press has reported on it with respectful shock and awe; Harvard Business School has been moved to do a case study. Indians are extremely proud of temporal organisational achievement and spiritual salvation that this ancient festival combines. But really, the 55-day Maha Kumbh, which ended on Sunday, should be a period of deep introspection for India's civic governments. Over a month and three quarters, some 120 million people - slightly less than the population of Japan - converge on a 20-square-kilometre area around the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna; tourists and reporters flock here, too, but not just to experience the diverse sights and sounds that have become part of the clichéd images of India. It's the amazing glitch-free organisation of this "giant pop-up city", as the Wall Street Journal calls it, that draws many. Law and order is rigorously maintained, and sexual harassment - the bane of women in crowded Indian public spaces - relatively minimal, thanks to vigilant policing. Given the rising reported crime levels in festivals such as the Mardi Gras in Brazil and the US' New Orleans, this is no small achievement. Garbage, the hallmark of every Indian city, is non-existent.

Then again, visitors from the remotest corners of India can enjoy access to the kind of sanitation and health services that are unthinkable back home. Consider: 76 per cent of Indian households have no access to toilets. Those who visit the Maha Kumbh have access to more than 40,000 toilets and urinals - a luxury even in India's capital city. Where few Indians have access to a hospital or a primary health care centre in their daily lives, visitors to the Kumbh have a 100-bed hospital, 12 health centres, 243 doctors, 247 paramedics and 600 other medical staff at their disposal. All this and non-stop electricity and water, too! All of these are facilities that citizens in developed cities, including many Southeast Asian ones, take for granted.

Even more incredibly, this bandobast - which is replicated every four years, and not just in the 12 years of the Maha Kumbh - is possible in one of India's most stagnant and corrupt states, Uttar Pradesh, where the hallmark remains its flyblown moffusil towns. Indeed, the stampede at Allahabad railway station, which killed 36 people, was outside the purview of the mela organisers and remains a stark reminder of the real India. The Kumbh's temporary urban paradise is a mocking reminder of what rapidly urbanising India isn't. There are lessons for modern urban town planners, of course, but they're obvious, age-old ones that hardly require a mega religious event to underline. In that sense and no other, the Kumbh's uber-efficiency is a poor reflection on India.