How residents in Prayagraj are coping with the Kumbh surge: A day in life

Prayagraj's Maha Kumbh has disrupted local life, with traffic snarls and overcrowding impacting daily routines, leading some residents to relocate temporarily.

Pradeep Kumar Verma has a routine. The Allahabad high court advocate leaves his single-storey residence in Prayagraj’s Naini at 9.30am. The journey, in his Maruti Swift Dzire, takes 40 minutes on an average day. He takes the Naini-Mirzapur road that leads to the new Yamuna bridge, before taking a right turn at Bangadh Dharamshala and turning on to Jawaharlal Nehru Road, which leads him to the high court premises.

How residents in Prayagraj are coping with the Kumbh surge: A day in life

There, the 44-year-old parks his car, and walks to his chamber -- No 36 in Upadhyay Hall – where he sits for nearly seven hours. By 5.30pm, as the crowds thin around India’s largest high court, he gets up from his chair to walk down to Gate 2, his clerk balancing an unstable tower of papers and files behind him. The commute back to his house takes roughly another 40 minutes.

The maze of narrow bylanes of the ancient city make everyday commute challenging but Verma has honed in on short cuts and local tricks to ease the pain. It’s been this way for 20 years – even when the city hosted the Ardh Kumbh in 2007, the Maha Kumbh in 2012-13, and the Kumbh Mela in 2019. Rinse and repeat.

In the second week of January, though, his schedule went off the rails. As crowds surged in Prayagraj from January 13, when the Maha Kumbh opened, Verma found it increasingly difficult to step out. The trip now took over two hours because of clogged roads and impossible snarls at two choke points on the way.

“The excessive crowd choking city roads and localities threw our lives out of gear. My movement was completely paralysed for days together. One could hardly move, stuck in traffic, with devotees crisscrossing between vehicles, pushing and shoving two-wheeler riders. I had important court cases lined up but could not reach the high court in time which left my clients annoyed,” said Verma.

As crowds swelled in the Uttar Pradesh town in January, people spilled out of the 4,000 hectare Maha Kumbh Nagar set up on the banks of the Ganga.

On the most auspicious days, especially Makar Sankranti on January 14 and Mauni Amavasya on January 29, the city saw a huge influx of pilgrims, forcing officials to clamp a series of traffic restrictions, which in turn forced thousands to distances of up to 15km from parking spots to the mela area and back.

With public transport scarce, thousands of exhausted pilgrims spent the night under the open sky along roadsides or took shelter in educational institutional buildings like Yaadgaar Hussaini Inter College in the Old City area.

People across communities, including Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, set up community meal counters along the pilgrims’ routes.

Finally, on January 30, Verma gave up. “I decided to somehow move to my ancestral village with my family in Jhansi,” he said. Now, with less than two weeks to go for the close of the mega holy event, Verma said he is in no mood to return immediately. “I will come back after Holi next month,” he said.

He isn’t the only one. Many of Prayagraj’s roughly 1.5 million residents are facing hurdles in their daily life as tens of millions of people descend on the Uttar Pradesh town to take a dip in the holy Sangam site. Government figures say that over 10 million people are pouring into Prayagraj every day, overwhelming facilities designed for a fraction of that number. Even the Maha Kumbh Nagar, with provisions for 3.5 million to 4 million people, is proving to be inadequate in the face of the deluge of devotees.

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Over a dozen localities, including Alopibagh, Baihrana, Daraganj, Allahpur, Naini, Jhunsi, Dhoomanganj, through which roads leading to Sangam pass have seen snaking traffic snarls right since start of the fair on January 13. The city’s roads, though widened in the run-up to Maha Kumbh, have creaked under the pressure of the Kumbh.

Almost all traffic crossings have been barricaded from at least three sides, even as a lack of proper signage indicating one-way movement have left commuters in the lurch. Further, security personnel from other districts of the state and country have been deputed on Kumbh duty, with their lack of knowledge of the city’s roads complicating the situation.

Prayagraj district has a population of approximately six million, according to the 2011 Census. Of this, the city hosts around 1.5 million people.

Official figures say that, on January 29, during the holy day of Mauni Amavasya, roughly 80 million people arrived in the city. A stampede in the early hours that day killed at least 30 people even as reports have suggested that the death toll might be higher. After the three main Amrit Snans on Makar Sankranti (January 14), Mauni Amavasya (January 29) and Basant Panchami (February 3), the count of bathers has remained above 10 million on normal days, according to official figures.

Such an explosive rise in the footfall has choked roads, lanes, bylanes and even public parks and open fields. Faced with this sea of pilgrims, some people – such as Verma – have decided to relocate. Others have locked themselves in, hoping to emerge once the crowds have thinned.

Abhay Awasthi, 68, a resident of Zero Road in the old city area, is one of them. Due to the snarls, the social activist ventures out of his house only if absolutely necessary.

“The old city area is itself congested compared to the rest of the city. Since I underwent open heart surgery a few years ago, I feel discomfort in excessive rush. I venture out of my home every two to three days, depending upon the necessity and rush on Zero Road. It has been over a month of living like this. We hope the rush will reduce soon,” he said.

“I have seen five Kumbh Melas since 1977, but never a devotee rush so huge and challenging…this Maha Kumbh has proved to be the biggest crowd puller, making locals try hard to wriggle out of the situation,” he said.

Rakesh Singh, a contractor who lives in Meerapur, has not been able to take his family for a dip despite living just 8km away from the Sangam site. “I could not muster enough courage to take my family to the Mela after the Mauni (Amavasya) stampede,” he said.

A power department employee, he has been unable to get to office because of the mela. He has now moved to his ancestral village in the neighbouring Pratapgarh district, along with his family.

Others are worried over as shortage of ration, including milk and other essential commodities.

Bhawana Chauhan, a resident of New Bhairana, struggled for several days last month to buy groceries for her family of four. “My milkman was unable to deliver milk for almost 10 days this month. There were days when I could not find even milk packets in any of the shops located close to my home,” she said.

“With trucks having problems entering the city, even the neighbourhood ration shops are running low on commodities,” she added.

She has now decided to go stay with her sister in Pilibhit for a few days.

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Most residents had anticipated large numbers of devotees on the six holy days. But what they had not planned for was the surge of pilgrims on other days too. Reels shared on social media show traffic jams in and around Prayagraj, people jostling for space on city roads, and crowds of devotees on bathing ghats in the Mela area.

Witnessing a sudden rise in the rush after Basant Panchami, city-based bullion trader Pankaj Singh wrote on Facebook, “Save me brother, I can’t bear it anymore.” Singh expressed the pain of being imprisoned in his home on the social platform, mentioning the “Maha Jam” in many districts of the state, including Prayagraj and neighbouring states.

Additional district magistrate of Maha Kumbh, Vivek Awasthi, said that efforts were being made to address the issue of traffic jams in different parts of the city. “Officials are personally monitoring the situation and vehicles bringing in devotees are being made to park in parking areas made in different parts of the city to check any clogging of city roads. Shuttle buses are catering to the crowds between parking areas and the mela,” he said.

District supply officer Sunil Singh said the supply of essential commodities such as milk and food grains was being monitored and efforts were on to ensure smooth delivery.

In a February 6 order, the Allahabad high court directed the police and civil administration to take immediate measures to ensure that legal proceedings are not disrupted due to heavy traffic congestion. Justice JJ Munir issued the order in response to difficulties faced by advocates in reaching the court on time. UP Board secretary Bhagwati Singh said Class 10 and 12 examinations were scheduled to commence from February 24 and, in view of the present circumstances, examinees will find it tough to reach their examination centres on time. According to Bishop George School and College director Ali Bakht, authorities might increase the reporting time of examinees from one hour to two hours.

Verma understands the excitement and pull of the auspicious occasion. But he can’t wait to get back home.

“Hopefully things will fall back into place by next and my family and I will return.”