The sensitivity towards human lives has gone down. Death due to natural calamity or by human error hardly bothers our establishment and therefore the response attached in the aftermath of any eventuality has been more or less on predictable lines like blame game, some assurance followed by inadequate compensation and announcement of enquiry. What more can be expected after the recent tragedy during Mahakumbh at Allahabad railway platform on 10 February in which 36 people died in a stampede. The response mechanism is generally in accordance to the degree of value attached to human beings and the level of seriousness displayed in protecting human lives in our country is known to one and all.
Soon after the incident Union Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal accepted that the arrangement put in place was not adequate and Azam Khan, who was in-charge of the Mela organising committee, resigned on moral ground to be later turned down by the Chief Minister. The gesture was praiseworthy but even a little extra efforts by them could have saved those lives. If we go by available media reports, it becomes clear that the basic dynamics of crowd management and disaster plan was not put in place to avoid such an eventuality. On general note stampede does take place with the combination of so many factors not taken care of. Stampedes take place all across the world but what is important to note is how they respond or what mechanism they follow to prevent such a mishap in future. A simple comparison of crowd management plan followed during the Mahakumbh and that during the Hajj in the recent past would be more than enough to narrate our response and approach towards human lives.
This is not the first instance of stampede; there were similar tragedies during the Kumb mela in 1954 and 1986, in 2012 in Jharkhand and Mathura, in 1999 and 2011 stampede at Sabarimala and 2008 Naina Devi temple stampede. Even during Hajj ceremony many incidents of stampede have taken place in the past.
In his recent report, Ziad Memish, from the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia, and his team has outlined that mass gatherings pose complex challenges that require a broad expertise and Saudi Arabia has the experience and infrastructure to provide unique expertise with respect to mass gatherings.
And even the preparations for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration and crowd management, for example, were also based on experiences derived from the Hajj. Very recently, Cubic Corporation is developing a new system that could help to manage large gathering more effectively. The technology is designed to provide information that is essential to manage large crowd that flow in and out of the event. By using this technique which requires a series of sensors and Cubic’s Mission Rehearsal Planning System the authorities can accurately determine in real time and the volume of people flowing in and out of a given area so that steps could be taken to avoid such stampede. The annual Hajj pilgrimage is considered the biggest challenge in crowd management and therefore the mechanism developed by Cubic Corporation is likely to be used as a test case or to find out how the system could be employed.