India, known for being one of the world’s oldest civilisations, is now tainted by recurring tragedies, where lives are being lost in avoidable stampedes. Public spaces in the country are rarely respected, preserved, or well-maintained. As a result, large public gatherings, either for services or events, lead to all kinds of complications.
Unchecked urban infrastructural decay is profoundly exacerbating the crisis. The stampede at New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS) on 15 February, where 18 lives were lost, was not only a local tragedy, but a global embarrassment. It is a harsh reminder that a nation with ambitions to become a ‘Vishwa Guru’ continues to struggle with elementary management and governance of its most vital spaces.
The failures of management that caused so many to die in the centre of the national capital send a ghoulish message: the nation has never learned from the past. And, there is no certainty that we ever will.
A recurring tragedy
It is shocking and disappointing to witness these recurring accidents. In the list of fatal crowd accidents across the globe in recent years, India is the only major economy that features repeatedly. We’re among nations such as Nigeria, Guinea, Congo, Cameroon, Madagascar, El Salvador, Yemen, Pakistan, and Uganda, having dominated the list over the last few years, particularly in comparison to these countries.
The pattern is an undisputable confirmation of the failure of our systems, which continues to haunt us. We are not working toward solving the core issues, and it is embarrassing to acknowledge that the world still sees us in this manner.
A stampede is among the most terrible ways to die. Imagine, one stumbles and the stampede starts—people are crushed, smothered, and buried under a pile of human bodies. It is ghastly to even consider.
Unfortunately, stampedes are not unfamiliar to Indians. They are an all-too-frequent sight. On 29 January, the Prayagraj Maha Kumbh Mela stampede took the lives of at least 30 people, although official estimates are still a murky topic.
Meanwhile, the government managed to “count” a staggering “64 crore” pilgrims who bathed at the Sangam, an area covering only 4,000 hectares. This disturbing discrepancy highlights the priorities of a system that values numbers over human lives.
Such incidences are a pan–India phenomenon. For example, the Chennai IAF Air Show last year ended up claiming the lives of five individuals, with over 100 others admitted to hospitals. The show was organised on 6 October 2024 in celebration of the Indian Air Force’s 92nd anniversary. The event saw a huge influx of people with no proper planning, resulting in a chaotic scenario. The inability to manage crowds, coordinate traffic, and ensure sufficient medical services came under fire.
Similarly, in July 2024, a crowd surge at an event in Hathras killed 121 individuals and left more than 150 injured. In January 2022, at Jammu and Kashmir’s Vaishno Devi temple, 12 individuals lost their lives and 16 others were injured. In 2008, the Naina Devi temple stampede in Himachal Pradesh claimed 145 lives. All these incidents point to a similar failing: the inability to manage large gatherings of people.
Whether it’s a religious pilgrimage or a festival, these events are usually ill-regulated, leading to a fatal outcome. Despite the frequency of these incidents, however, the government has not made much of an effort to address the core issue.
The stampede at NDLS was caused by a sudden surge in bookings due to a Maha Kumbh event that was ongoing at the time. Between 6 pm and 8 pm on 15 February, 9,600 tickets were booked—a steep rise from the regular 7,000. Officials were aware of the ticket rush but did not take any preventive measures to control the crowd.
The whole system of public infrastructure and administrative apathy needs to be addressed to prevent such fiasco and snafu. Unfortunately, the railway ministry is busy promoting vanity projects such as Vande Bharat.
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Civic sense
It is easy to blame the system at such times of national calamity, but it would be unjust to overlook the paucity of civic sense. The absence of discipline, compassion, and common sense of public behaviour is a deep-seated issue within the Indian mind. Crowded and disorganised environments that are commonplace in India—from the local trains of Mumbai to the metro system of Delhi to religious and festive gatherings —exhibit a bleak behavioural trend. People push, shove, and generally do not care about public spaces. This is very much a part of the Indian psyche, whether we are in India or abroad.
A video from London brings this into focus. Indians, pushing and shoving to get onto a bus, are watched by locals with amazement, which eventually can manifest as racism. (While racism against Indians is reprehensible, we should also take into account how such public behaviour reinforces the image of India as a ‘Third World country’, unable to keep even basic order.) Though this apparently trivial behaviour might seem insignificant in the moment, it indicates a greater cultural problem. This same lack of civic responsibility is what allows stampedes and such events to flourish.
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What must change
In October 2022, Seoul experienced a stampede where over 150 lives were lost. South Korea, however, acted swiftly and decisively by implementing tough crowd control measures, regulations, and safety protocols. In a matter of time, mechanisms were developed to ensure that such a disaster never occurs again.
Conversely, India’s record on stampedes is bleak. Even with repeated occurrences and deaths, there has been no significant shift in the public administration’s approach toward crowd control. The absence of set guidelines and the lack of elementary protocols are glaring.
Two essential steps must be given urgent priority: governance reform and cultural change.
First, the government must put in place wide-ranging crowd management regulations and enforce them strictly. The regulations must specify the establishment of crowd capacities for public gatherings and making venues large enough to accommodate huge crowds. Local authorities must take responsibility for ensuring public safety, especially at events that have a higher chance of overcrowding. Paying lip service to safety is not sufficient; the nation needs to invest in infrastructure and technology to guarantee that its citizens are secure.
Second, there must be a change in India’s civic culture at its roots. Essential social responsibility—queueing up, respecting public spaces, and keeping public areas clean—needs to be imparted since childhood. Since it cannot be legislated, it must be made a part of the curriculum and ingrained through awareness programmes.
Karti P Chidambaram is a Member of Parliament for Sivaganga, and a Member of the All India Congress Committee. His X handle is @KartiPC. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
All money for socialism and corruption, no money for urban infrastructure.. Jawaharlal Nehru made India ill with socialism. All Indian politicians are diseased with socialism.
Recurring landslide Congress Losses shows that there is something drastically wrong with the Congress and Senate suspect that insiders like Shri Gandhi are acting as effective moles for the BJp