A locket depicting Suraj Pal Singh aka Bhole Baba at the spot a day after a massive stampede that took place during a 'satsang' (religious congregation), in Sikandara Rao area in Hathras district, on Wednesday. At least 116 people were killed and scores injured in the stampede. (PTI Photo)

India is good at gathering crowds. It is a natural enough gift arising from being the most populous nation on earth. Where else would 80,000 people get together to greet Donald Trump or lakhs congregate to see a godman or crores attend a festival? The problem lies in crowd management, which is why the country also has a history of stampedes taking several hundred lives periodically.

The latest stampede in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh where over three lakh people gathered to greet a godman and receive his blessings, was an extreme example of how not to conduct a crowded event as there were poor or non-existent crowd control measures like good passageways for entrance and exit. The death toll was a forbidding 121-plus people, mostly women and children who are more defenceless than men in a crush of people.

The crowd management was mostly a private affair with a 17-man crew of the godman in charge of keeping the gathered people orderly and there were too few policemen, posting who is the administration’s responsibility. Given a ballpark figure of 80,000 attendees, the security force deployed was totally inadequate.

It is said that people who surged to touch the godman as he made his exit were stopped by his close security personnel leading to many devotees falling into a ditch. The event was held in tents at an altogether desolate piece of territory with nearby hospitals barely equipped to take in a few score of the population falling sick.

Given the pathways that were barely sufficient for people to come in, smooth entry and exit was a near impossibility for ambulances and rescue teams to come in even as emergency exits for people were just not planned.

It is simple to say that there should be a law against godmen, mostly thought of as conmen despite their popularity among the people, as indeed the Congress party chief did. No one would venture an opinion that the Hajj pilgrimage be stopped because 1,000 people died from the heat or the Maha Kumbh Mela should not take place because 15 crore people expected to attend it may be at risk the next time it is held.

What India lacks most is a sense of public safety and a crowd management system to cope with the extraordinary numbers. Leave it to the police or the petty bureaucracy in a rural location and it is virtually inviting a calamity of the type that occurred when devotees began pushing and shoving in their eagerness to get out once the event got over.

There is, of course, a total lack of accountability. The fall guys are always easy to find as a few administrators are suspended or transferred because their jobs must be protected no matter what, because that is the self-preserving way of the bureaucracy.

It would serve the interests of justice best if the godman ‘Bhole Baba’ were to be hunted down and proceeded against by the law for making inadequate arrangements for his devotees and the local administration, including the district magistrate and the police chief, hauled up and given exemplary punishment by the terms of the new criminal code.