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Journalism of Courage
Karur rally tragedy: As the Karur death toll mounts, where a rally by Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) president and actor Vijay saw a stampede on Saturday, there is a familiar script to how the incident unfolded. More than crowds thronging to an event, a specific trigger — in this case people climbing on to a tree behind Vijay’s van and then falling off into the crowd, setting off a crush — and the resultant panic leads to a wider stampede. Delays in rescue efforts, because of the crowd size and the inability of first responders to wade in, further contribute to the toll.
In south India, political rallies tend to trigger overcrowding, especially given the number of film actors that have transitioned into politics. The heady mix of star power and politics makes it difficult for authorities to restrict crowds to manageable levels. In the Karur case, while the investigation is underway, there does seem to have been an element of inadequate planning for the crowd size. Delays at the event likely contributed to the deadly crush.
The instances of stampedes in India typically unfold at places of worship, sporting events, railways stations, and at large-scale gatherings such as the Maha Kumbh. Nearly 90 people are reported to have lost their lives since the beginning of this year in such event-linked crushes.
Rallies, sporting events, railway stations
Just over three months ago, in June, the RCB victory celebration of the team’s IPL win in Bengaluru led to a stampede near the approach road to Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, leading to at least a dozen lives being lost. The likely trigger included lack of planning, coordination issues, indecision over allowing a victory parade and rumours of free passes, something that the Cricket Authorities had subsequently denied. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said in his comments just after the incident that the police failed to estimate the size of the crowd that gathered outside the stadium.
In early May, multiple people were killed in a stampede in Goa’s Shirgaon village, where devotees had gathered in a religious yatra at Shree Lairai Devi Temple.
Earlier in February, 18 people died and scores were injured in a stampede late in the night as Kumbh pilgrims tried to board a Prayagraj-bound train at the New Delhi Railway Station. Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw informed the Rajya Sabha in August that a big headload from one of the passengers fell into the crowd, leading to the stampede. Many of the passengers were carrying big headloads, affecting smooth movement on the FOB, the Railways said, and the fall in the headload from one of the passengers resulted in people tripping on the stairs. Consequently, passengers fell on each other, triggering the stampede.
On January 29, 30 people were killed and over 60 injured in an early morning stampede at the Sangam area of the Kumbh as pilgrims rushed in to take a dip on the occasion of Mauni Amavasya, an auspicious day in the Hindu calendar. Inadequate crowd control measures were cited as part of the reason for the incident.
According to the NCRB’s report titled ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India,’ from 2000 to 2022, 3,074 lives had been lost in stampedes. Nearly 4,000 stampede events have been recorded over the last three decades. The NCRB has been collecting data on stampede incidents across India since 1996.
Not that these events do not happen elsewhere. In 2022, Halloween celebrations in South Korea resulted in a stampede while in Germany, in 2010, a devastating “Love Parade” crush unfolded. The difference, though, is that these events typically are not allowed to reoccur, as authorities learn from the odd incidents and put in place remedial measures.
It needs to be mentioned though that in India, the scale of all these events is always much larger than in most other parts of the world. Another issue is a general disregard towards rules and regulations, which is a societal phenomenon in India.
According to Anna Sieben, a professor at the University of Wuppertal in Germany who has been researching crowd dynamics, a big problem is that people in such events often do not realise anything is wrong until it is too late.
Sieben, a social and cultural psychologist who uses experimental methods as well as qualitative interview, observation and archival data in her work on crowds and pedestrians, has said that “individuals in crowds often communicate and orient themselves through non-verbal cues, such as body language” and that it has been convincingly shown that “mental states in crowds do not spread like wildfire, but emotions actually change depending on the situation and the behaviour of others”. That transmission happens faster if the crowds are densely packed in, given that the sense of personal space is a lot more negotiable in India than elsewhere in the world.
Also, in a stampede, while some people might die due to trampling, a bigger trigger is compressive asphyxia, where pressure on the rib cage due to the sudden crush leads to impaired breathing. The initial cause is invariably asphyxia. But then someone may stumble and fall, resulting in a domino effect and others falling on top of the people who are down, which could then lead to more deaths on account of trampling.
A tightly packed gathering is a recipe for disaster, especially if the authorities have underestimated the crowd sizes or are ill-prepared to tackle a localised crush, which can then spread outwards in a gathering. That does seem to have been the case in Karur.
