© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Every few years, a sprawling temporary city is conjured on the banks of the Ganga in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, complete with roads, toilets, pontoon bridges and tents, to host millions of pilgrims — only to vanish within weeks.
The Maha Kumbh, hailed as the “largest gathering of humanity on Earth”, is set to commence on January 13 in Prayagraj, with an anticipated turnout of 40 crore devotees. Backed by an estimated budget of nearly Rs 7,000 crore, the Uttar Pradesh government is racing to complete preparations for the event, delayed significantly due to the Ganga’s unseasonal reluctance to recede.
“The river did not recede until September, whereas the banks usually surface in August,” Additional District Magistrate (ADM) Vivek Chaturvedi tells The Indian Express. “We had to divert the tributaries into a single channel. There was 60 per cent erosion in the Sangam area, which we reclaimed with assistance from IIT Guwahati.”
On Wednesday, a mounted cavalry of the UP Police was followed by a vibrant procession: elephants adorned with bright chalk powder, camels draped in orange garlands and white horses carrying sword-wielding sadhus making their way to their akharas.
Metres away, an army of labourers toiled around the clock to ensure the site was ready by January 13, the deadline for the shahi snan (royal bath). To manage the preparations for the Maha Kumbh, the state had in December last year declared the 10,000 hectares mela area as a temporary district.
For over two months, more than 25,000 workers and artisans from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha worked tirelessly to transform the sandy river banks into a bustling tent city. They leveled the white sands to lay metal plates for tents, crafted the structures with sickles and plastic ropes, laid water pipes with bulldozers and delicately painted massive murals of Hindu deities.
The government had planned to set up 1.5 lakh tents with over 400 km of temporary roads illuminated by 69,000 solar hybrid street lights across the campgrounds and 30 pontoon bridges to facilitate pilgrim movement into the sacred waters. Besides these, it also planned temporary ghats stretching 12 km along the river, complemented by beautified roads and access points spanning 8 km.
“The work started in October with the leveling of land. By November, allotments for tents were complete. The entire tent city was built within 45 days,” adds ADM Chaturvedi.
Rakesh Sharma has been providing tents for the mela for 40 years. Though his inventory ranges from German hangers worth crores to simple tin sheds that can be purchased for Rs 25,000, he has been fuming all morning. “My investments worth Rs 12 lakh are stuck due to supply chain issues in Haryana and Kanpur,” he says.
Supervising 10-20 of his workers, who continue setting up tents, he adds, “Despite this setback, I sold 12 German hangers this time and made a profit.”
A Kumbh veteran since 2012, Krishan crafts straw and bamboo structures by hand. In a matter of hours, his team and he will fashion them into rental straw homes for a group of sadhus. As his team ties bamboo sticks with plastic ropes using just sickles, he says, “We work at religious melas and return to farming when there’s no work. This time, the work (at the Kumbh) is delayed. All these homes should have been built weeks ago.”
Sustaining himself on handouts by sadhus, Krishan advocates for government wages for artisans like him. “Handouts from priests aren’t enough to survive,” he adds.
Like him, Dinesh has been overseeing the construction of barricades and police watchtowers at the Kumbh for 25 years. “I employ workers from Chhattisgarh, Bihar,West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. They have already built 60 watchtowers at the Kumbh despite the delay. Over 50 of my workers can build a single watchtower in just three-four hours,” he says.
For two months now, Munna, a Jal Nigam contractor, has been coordinating with teams to lay at least 3 km of pipelines each day across the mela grounds. Having worked on this site since 2008, Munna manages a team of 400 labourers. “We are in a race against time. All this should have wrapped up weeks ago. Broken pipes are a constant problem. As soon as we patch them up, the sewage department breaks them,” he claims.
Meanwhile, the mela’s sanitation infrastructure comprises over 1.5 lakh toilets, 25,000 dustbins, 160 waste management vehicles and 15,000 sanitation workers.
Rajesh, who hails from Banda in UP, has been sweeping and maintaining health facilities on the mela ground since January 1. His eight-hour shifts earn him Rs 410 daily — wages promised but not yet delivered, he says. “They say we will get paid every 15 days, but it’s usually a month,” he laments.
With no official shelter in place for sanitation workers, Rajesh and his colleagues have been relying on cloth tents. They get firewood from home to keep themselves warm and walk 1-2 km across the river bank in search of food. “Only those working at bhandaras get food. The rest of us have to fend for ourselves,” he says.
Satish has brought his entire family — 12 members, including children aged 4 and 5 years — to the mela area from Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. Despite their shelter, a fragile tarpaulin tent, offering little protection against the biting cold, the family wakes at 6 am and works till sunset. A 12-hour shift fetches the family a total of Rs 12,000 per month.
“We cook our meals over open fires. We spend Rs 250 daily on food and firewood. I hope our children earn a better living than us,” he says.
Chhatrasal Kushwaha, a fine arts graduate from Lucknow University, has been painting 70-foot columns at the mela for 20 days. His team of 14 artists has created intricate renditions of Shiva, Ganesha and Saraswati in modern styles. Each column takes three days, with workers painting in 16-hour shifts daily. “These are freehand works on rounded surfaces, which require skill and patience. Since we have no time, we work through the night after setting up the lights. Thankfully, only two more columns need to be painted,” he says.
Besides transforming 29 temples, the government’s beautification project also includes 11 corridors to guide the flow of people and vehicles at the mela. Over 1,800 hectares alone have been dedicated to parking and accommodating the endless influx of vehicles, say officials.
A white sand bank near the Sangam area, artificially created by the state government, is in its final stages of transformation. Even as a team of 12 labourers heave heavy metal plates onto the ground, Prasad Yadav is worried about meeting the deadline. “We lay 200 metres of metal plates on the sand daily to ensure that vehicles don’t get stuck. The peshwai (grand procession taken out by sadhus from their akhadas) has started and sadhus have started entering their akharas. We have to ensure that everything holds up and doesn’t fall apart,” Yadav says.
