Stuck records are tiresome. But when tragedies like Saturday night’s stampede at New Delhi Railway Station occur so close to the earlier one at the Kumbh Mela less than a month ago, sounding like a stuck record is imperative until the message is driven home. The message? That individual ‘normal’ lives matter over the collective. The irony of much talk about how the Maha Kumbh ‘shows how big travel is, and what can be achieved’ isn’t lost-or shouldn’t be. The latest deaths of at least 18 people, including 5 children, caused by a sudden surge of passengers waiting to board trains for Prayagraj to attend the Maha Kumbh is not an anomaly. It’s a disaster that has been allowed to be played out.Talk of ‘Viksit Bharat’ is exciting. Occasions like the Maha Kumbh showcase that quantity, indeed, has a quality of its own. But all this falls by the wayside-as do notions like ‘demographic dividend’-if the individual is given the short shrift, and the collective is made the be-all and end-all. Having VIP dips in the Ganga as the showpiece of a Kumbh is all very fine. But when the ‘unwashed masses’ are left to fend for themselves, society and its curators must ask themselves how much effort put into making a Potemkin Village-a fake construction that hides an undesirable reality-is really worth it.
Having people risk being crushed for an occasion is hardly good advertisement for ringfenced, safe versions of similar gatherings. Saturday’s tragedy is yet another wake-up call, which should become an inflexion point, where the country-its citizenry and authorities-turn their attention to value comfort, and life. If that means prohibiting gatherings beyond a size until infrastructure and control mechanisms are ready, so be it.
