Crowd management, not politics, is the issue
Politics has unfortunately dominated the narrative in the aftermath of the temple tragedy that took place in Madhya Pradesh on Sunday. Concerted action by the Centre and various States to prepare a blueprint for crowd management should replace politics. We have, fortunately, many templates that have served the purpose and can be relied upon to draw a gameplan so that precious lives are not lost when hundreds of thousands of devotees flock to religious sites on occasions, like they did at Ratangarh temple in Datia district, and are caught in a stampede. The immediate examples of effective crowd control that come to mind relate to the Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh and the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, which manages the famed Tirupati temple, has already moved to put in place a full-fledged crowd management module to cope with the ever-increasing inflow of pilgrims. Barriers have been erected to regulate the movement of devotees, and a large number of temple volunteers are forever moving around, disciplining the crowds. The effective presence of security personnel ensures that no untoward incident takes place. It is true that, as a result of the stringent measures, devotees have to queue up for long hours to gain a darshan of lord Venkateswara, but that is any day better than a haphazard system where pilgrims run amock in the race to be the first to enter the sanctum sanctorum, which leads to man-made disasters. In addition, the trust which manages the temple has also moved to have a ropeway to connect Tirupati and Tirumala to streamline the movement of visitors and reduce the chances of clogging and the resultant dangers. Similarly, the arrangements at the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu are virtually fool-proof. Closed circuit television cameras have been installed to spot not just trouble-makers and terrorist activities but also to make sure that the movement of the lakhs of pilgrims who visit the shrine is smooth and well co-ordinated. Security personnel and volunteers of the temple regularly patrol the track leading right up to the shrine, and nip in the bud any possibility of wayward movement of the devotees.
The authorities must also learn lessons from the effective manner in which the Kumbh Mela is managed. The world's single largest religious gathering attracts crores of devotees on a single day, and, in recent times, the authorities have been handling the situation remarkably well. This was not the case in the earlier years when crowd management was less efficient. More than 1,000 people had died in a stampede in Allahabad during the congregation in 1954; nearly 40 persons lost their lives in the 2003 Kumbh in Nashik after they scrambled to collect coins thrown by sadhus. With the use of technology and a better trained force, crowd management at the Kumbh is now more effective.
Prominent temples across the country have begun to understand the need to put in place a regime that eliminates or at least minimise the possibility of man-made disasters like stampedes. The Baidyanathan shrine in Deogarh in Ranchi, for instance, has initiated measures to have a Tirupati-like crowd management system, after a stampede among devotees claimed 10 lives a year ago. Meanwhile, the National Disaster Management Authority must step in to guide temple managements and help them codify crowd management strategies.