Kumbh is where the poor trade their desperation for hope, wash away sins they do not remember in search of a future they may never find. These pearls of wisdom went viral on social media as people passionately discussed the pros and cons of a spectacle that pushed virtually everything else out of headspace and news cycles.

How will the Maha Kumbh 2025—which officially draws to a close on 26 February—be remembered? As the most successful and well attended? Or as the most harrowing and heartless? That will depend on who you are and where you stand. No argument, though, about it being  the most expensive—with official spends pegged at an estimated Rs 7,500 crore; the last Kumbh (of 2013) cost a relatively modest Rs 1,100 crore.

Yogi Adityanath, the monk chief minister who runs a business empire in Gorakhpur, will possibly remember it as the “grandest congregation ever”—notwithstanding the “small incidents” that do occur  when you host something at this scale. Others—and not just his political rivals—will remember it as the most politicised, most communal, most chaotic, worst managed Kumbh ever.

While Yogi bragged about having generated revenues of Rs 3 lakh crore—through commercial spaces leased for a few lakhs or 40—businessmen lamented huge losses due to negligible sales. The enterprising who bottled Ganga jal and sold it as ‘holy water’ (filled with faecal coliform), made more money than legit dealers and shopkeepers. Media reports suggested that even the beggars, who travelled to Prayagraj from faraway states, collected enough to make the trip rewarding.

On 16 February—the day after 18 people lost their lives in a stampede at New Delhi railway station—a euphoric Yogi Adityanath claimed that over 50 crore people had taken their ritual bath at the Sangam. That figure may well touch  70 crore by the time the mela-melee ends.

As officials went blue in the face explaining how face-recognition technology, drones, CCTV cameras and other surveillance techniques would determine the exact number of visitors, the crowds were evidence enough—more people were coming than even Yogi might have imagined in his wildest dreams.

The chaos that erupted at railway stations leading in and away from Prayagraj belied railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s claim that Indian Railways had been in prep-mode for the past three years. Passengers certainly did not benefit from the stated investment of Rs 5,000 crore, nor the 300 special trains that were ‘pressed into service’. Inter-state coordination was overlooked, as was the fact that existing stations and railway tracks simply cannot cope with the movement of over 13,000 passenger trains a day!

Railway officials say they have never witnessed such large crowds. Even as pilgrims broke through doors and windows to occupy every inch of space on both AC and non-AC trains, sometimes locking themselves inside toilets, unruly scenes erupted at Guru Gorakhdham railway station in Amethi (Uttar Pradesh) and Madhubani and Samastipur in Bihar.

Cancellation of trains, the inevitable late arrivals, the confusing announcements and frequent changes of platforms at railway stations were a living nightmare. Imagine the desperate surge when thousands packed into a space with no daylight between them have to suddenly switch platforms on a railway station.

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The chaos wasn’t limited to trains and railway stations. In the second week of February, a 300-kilometre-long jam on the highway leading from Madhya Pradesh to Prayagraj brought traffic to a grinding halt for an agonising 48 hours, making it possibly the longest traffic jam in the world.

On those roads that weren’t choked, road accidents claimed the lives of pilgrims. Ten were killed in a head-on collision on the Mirzapur-Prayagraj route. Three from Jammu and three from Nepal were killed in two separate incidents. Even from Indore, 900 kilometre away, came news of pilgrims meeting tragic ends in road accidents on their way to Prayagraj.

The Maha Kumbh will also go down in history for the extraordinary lengths to which the authorities went… no, not to control the surge of people, but to control and choke the flow of information, on the tragedies that ensued as a result of the focus on projecting the event as a grand awakening of Hindus, never mind the “minor tragedies” of a stampede here and there or the absurdity of a plan that envisions a congregation of “45 crore people” without any credible attempt to manage the flow of that surge. 

The treacherous word-of mouth publicity of the most auspicious, ‘once-in-144-years’ Maha Kumbh surely played a hand in the unprecedented rush. By the time people began pointing out that similar claims are made by charlatans at every Kumbh and Ardh Kumbh, it was too late. It had spread like wildfire through WhatsApp groups and other social media, prompting even the very old and infirm and women who had reportedly never stepped outside their villages to make what they believed was the pilgrimage of a lifetime.

Promises of free food, shelter and train travel also worked like magnets. Most of the pilgrims apparently travelled ticketless. Questioned by an exasperated official about who had authorised such ‘ticketless travel’, a group of women replied, “Why, Narendra Modi, himself!” The video of this interaction, reportedly from Buxar in Bihar, went viral.

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Initially, the UP government flatly denied the stampede that took place in the wee hours of 29 January at what is called the ‘Sangam Nose’ in Prayagraj. With media present and countless eyewitnesses, it became impossible to suppress, which is when the government finally acknowledged the tragedy.

Officials claimed only 30 people had lost their lives, but independent sources suggested otherwise. Dainik Bhaskar and Reuters reported 40 bodies in hospitals, while a Newslaundry investigation uncovered a list of 79 dead—none of whom appeared in official records.

The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) also found evidence of deliberate data suppression: “Our preliminary investigation reveals that the Uttar Pradesh government employed multiple tactics to obscure the true fatality count. Bodies were sent to two separate postmortem centres and, in some cases, records of their retrieval were manipulated.”

Then came the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)’s report on faecal contamination at Prayagraj spiking way beyond permissible limits during the Kumbh. To put it simply: the water was simply not safe to bathe in. On 16 February, the principal bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) pulled up the UP Pollution Control Board: “You have made 500 million people bathe in polluted sewage water, water that was not fit for bathing, and people [even] had to drink that water.” Reprimanding the UP Board for its failure to submit a comprehensive report, the NGT added, “It seems you are under some kind of pressure”.

Did Yogi buy this? Hell, no. On 19 February, he refused to accept the CPCB’s report and insisted that water at the Sangam was good enough to drink. Perhaps he might like to be the first to take that holy sip?

In contemptuous disregard of all these warnings, the administration is busy advertising the next big holy dip on Shivratri (26 February). Expect another big surge of devotees—including the well-heeled among them, with the means to pay for the green corridors, the exclusive ghats, the big-ticket tents, and all the rest of the VIP bandobast—to take that ‘once-in-144-years’ shot at salvation. And keep your fingers crossed.