List of major stampedes in India over the years.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: Mistakes, you either learn from it or just ignore it. After scores of incidents of stampede deaths, triggered by welling crowds in pilgrimages and religious gatherings, common enough in India, yet another one has been added to that number.
This time 27 people lost their lives, many of them children and elderly folks, when the thronging crowd surged forward for the symbolic dip in the River Godavari River in Southern India to mark the Pushkaralu festival, in Andhra Pradesh. To make matters worse, the zealous pilgrims were even keener to take the holy dip, as it was known to be more auspicious to enact the submersion on the first day itself, when the festival starts.
Police say that the jostling, teeming crowd swayed to one side after some pilgrims rushed to the river bank to retrieve their footwear which were getting swept away in the flow. What a pity lives were lost just because there has not been any system to keep the shoes/footwear? Yes, the question is, will we ever learn, especially when such celebrations and devotions are so common in this country. The state administration said that the incident occurred in the town of Rajahmundry in the early hours of Tuesday, the first day of the festival which would continue for 12 days.
The generic name of the festival, Pushkaram, is an Indian festival dedicated to worshiping of rivers. It is also known as Pushkaralu (in Telugu),Â
The celebration happens annually, once in 12 years along each river. Each river is associated with a zodiac sign, and the river for each year’s festival is based on which sign Jupiter is in at the time. Due to regional variations, some of the zodiac signs are associated with multiple rivers.
Here is a list of similar incidents that has been occurring with alarming regularity:
·  January 15, 2014: Stampede in Chitrakoot Banka in Bihar when three people were killed and 12 injured while a milling crowd tried to enter the theatre to watch cultural programs as a part of a theatre program to watch cultural functions on Makar Sankranti in Banka district in Bihar.
· October 13, 2013: In the stampede in Datia, Madhya Pradesh, 89 people lost their lives and another 100 injured at a stampede on a bridge leading to a temple in Madhya Pradesh.
· February 10, 2013—Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh—During the Kumbh Mela the stampede which was at the railway station took the lives of 36 people.
· November 19, 2012—Another stampede killed 20 people during the Chhath festival in Adalat Ganj in Patna.
· September 24, 2012–Stampede in Jharkhand took 9 lives, including that of eight women who died of suffocation in an ashram in Jharkhand’s Deoghar district on September 24, 2012 while offering morning prayers as part of Saint Thakur Anukul Chand’s 125th birth anniversary celebrations at the ashram.
· September 23, 2012—Three pilgrims lost their lives at a stampede Ladli Ji temple in Barsana where a large congregation had gathered on the occasion of Radha Ashtami, in the pilgrim town if Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.
· February 19, 2012—At the Mahashivratri fair at Bhavnath temple in Junagadh in Gujarat, six died in a stampede.
· January 14, 2011—Kerala, Sabarimala: About 106 pilgrims lost their lives during a stampede at the famous annual pilgrimage.
· November 8, 2011–Stampede in Haridwar: At least 22 people died and many others injured during a ceremony in near Har-ki-Pauri ghat close to the holy river Ganga.
· March 4, 2010– About 63 people were killed and 100 injured at the Ram Janki Temple in Uttar Pradesh stampede when a temple gate fell which triggered a panic amongst the crowd.
· September 30, 2008– Rajasthan Temple Stampede: Took the lives of 120 at the hill top Chamunda Devi temple in Jodhpur in Rajasthan while celebrating the Navaratra festival.
· July, 2008–Orissa Stampede: During the auspicious day of Jagannath Yatra of Lord Jagannath and his siblings in Puri, six died and 12 were injured.
· August 3, 2006–Himachal Temple stampede: At the Naina Devi temple in the hill state a stampede killed 160 devotees.
Who is responsible, the pilgrims or the state or is it the religious fervor or simply a combination of all the factors? But them the buck has to stop somewhere. There is an abject need of a disaster management program that is effective and swift to deploy. Then there is the need for critical anticipation of such gatherings where preventive measures have to be dynamically locked in with clear cut responsibilities laid out. The need for awareness is key to prevent such incidents, both among the administrators and the pilgrims. Also, a judicious use of technology and effective modes of communications would help save many lives in future.
(Rajiv Theodore is India Bureau Chief, The American Bazaar)