A mass, public celebration that UNESCO deems intangible cultural heritage for humanity, Kolkata’s Durga Puja, quite like the Mahakumbh in Prayagraj, is also an administrative challenge with few parallels — millions throng the streets in one of India’s most densely populated cities, walking from one pandal to another; temporary structures of all kinds come up; and revelry rises to a new crescendo. All this makes it imperative that the authorities (civic and police), the organisers, and civil society participants ensure
A mass, public celebration that UNESCO deems intangible cultural heritage for humanity, Kolkata’s Durga Puja, quite like the Mahakumbh in Prayagraj, is also an administrative challenge with few parallels — millions throng the streets in one of India’s most densely populated cities, walking from one pandal to another; temporary structures of all kinds come up; and revelry rises to a new crescendo. All this makes it imperative that the authorities (civic and police), the organisers, and civil society participants ensure devotion doesn’t end in disaster. This backdrop makes the stampede on Saturday evening at the Chor Bagan puja, one of the oldest pujas in Kolkata, seem like a failure on multiple levels.
At least three factors, based on initial reports, seem to have led to the tragedy — rain that drove people into the puja pavilion for shelter, outstripping its capacity; narrow exit and entry points that typically contribute to crowd build-up; and inadequate policing arrangements at the venue which incapacitated crowd management. None of these factors are unforeseeable or can’t be hedged against. Proper arrangements for rain shelters — October rains in Kolkata are not unusual — could have prevented over-crowding in the pavilions, as would have wide entry and exit points allowing emergency evacuation. The indispensability of the latter has perhaps been spelt out in every such accident, including the Hathras crowd crush of 2024 that killed 121 people.
With the puja acquiring a sharpened focus due to the change in government in West Bengal, why were adequate policing arrangements for oversight and crowd management, as well as emergency support, synonymous with such events, not prioritised? Why did action on the ground not meet the slogans? There have been some arrests, and those at the points of failure would likely be brought to book, but why was such alacrity missing in prevention? These questions will continue to haunt the authorities long after the deity takes leave of her devotees.
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