TESTS OF FAITH
After the Uttarakhand tragedy, we look at disaster preparedness at major pilgrimage sites.
Thousands lost their lives in the recent Uttarakhand floods. Estimates vary — a little over a thousand says the government, 11,000 says UN. Among those who died, many were pilgrims flocking to the Kedarnath temple and other religious sites in the region.
It is not the first time that India has faced a tragedy at a religious site. With a large number of devotees, spread across faiths, congregating at pilgrimage sites during peak seasons, these places become extremely vulnerable. Indian tragedies are social tragedies, says sociologist Shiv Visvanathan. He adds, “In India, places do not return to normal after disasters. They cascade into other disasters.”
Sometimes, the catastrophe is natural and at times, it is man made. In 2005, for instance, an avalanche buried two villages along the Amarnath route, killing more than 200 pilgrims. A stampede killed around 40 in Kumbh this year in Allahabad. Or more recently, last Sunday, blasts rocked Mahabodhi Temple in Gaya, fortunately causing no major casualties.
Such tragedies can certainly be contained, says Rohit Jigyasu, UNESCO Chair Professor at Japan’s Institute of Disaster Mitigation for Urban Cultural Heritage. Then, why do we fail repeatedly? “There is little collaboration between organisations leading disaster management and civic agencies. For example, there is no proper plan for evacuation or exit and understanding of how many people a site can accommodate.”
According to a CAG audit earlier this year, none of the major projects taken by National Disaster Management Agency — India’s apex body for disaster management — were completed, either due to improper planning or were abandoned.
Diagnosis starts at the primary level. “The least we can do is to learn to manage our crowds and act swiftly during disasters. We have failed to do that,” says Prabhakran V, who published his research on crowd safety in International Journal of Innovative Technology and Creative Engineering in 2011.