Crowd Management for Disaster Management: Case of Pandharpur

March - April 2023

Shaktisagar Dhole serves as the District Disaster Management Officer in the Solapur district of Maharashtra.

Shaktisagar Dhole

अनागतं यः कुरुते स शोभते ॥ ‘Seeing the coming crisis, the who decides his future program remains contented.’ Read how the famous but crowded -Pilgrim (Waari) of Pandharpur in the Solapur district of Maharashtra is managed through Incident Response System 

India is a country of festivals and celebrations. Therefore, huge religious, cultural, political, or other large gatherings are part of the culture. Due to the past events of stampedes or accidents at the venue of gatherings that turned the celebrations into mourning, there is a pressing need to manage Crowd with the approach of Disaster Management. Some of the horrific but avoidable stampedes were: 

Morbi Bridge – On October 30, 2022, a suspension bridge over the Machchhu River in Gujrat state of Morbi city collapsed. This was a 4.1 ft wide and 750ft long bridge on the Machchhu River at 49 ft height. Morbi bridge was also a connection between Mahaprabhuji and Samakantha Districts and was constructed by ‘The British’ in the 19th century. On the day of the incident, there were more than 500 people on the bridge; however, the bridge’s capacity was only 125, maintenance was poor, and the incident response system was nowhere to be seen. The overcrowding of the Morbi bridge led to the unfortunate collapse, causing the loss of 141 precious lives, including 40 children.     

Elphinstone Road Railway Station Mumbai – On September 29, 2017, a stamp at this station took the life of 23 people. The incident occurred in the morning during the rush hours of all local offices. It was raining, too, and many commuters were on the footbridge connecting two major railway lines. Four trains arrived simultaneously at the station on that unfortunate date at 10:30 am. Suddenly rumor spread that the pedestrian bridge was collapsing. Panic moves and slipperiness caused the stampede.               

Kalubai Mandir Mandhardev Satara District – On January 25, 2005, around 3,00,000 people/devotees were on the temple’s hill to take the annual pilgrimage on the ‘Shankbhari Purnima’ full moon of that month. It’s a 24-hour-long festival with the ritual of scarifying animals to goddesses. It also has a ritual of breaking coconuts at Mangirbaba temple near the temple entrance. Devotees also dance with the idol of the goddess Kalubai. Witnesses said the rush started around midday after some pilgrims slipped on the temple’s steep stone steps, wet with coconut water spilled from fruit presented as offerings to the goddess Kalubai. A fire broke out in shops nearby, and gas cylinders exploded, which causes a rush and stampede. This stampede took the life of 291 pilgrims. 

Apart from these examples mentioned above, the Kumbh Mela stampede, Medaram Jatra Telangana state events, and many other unfortunate deadly stampedes happened in the premise of gatherings due to a lack of crowd and crisis management. However, it is possible to avoid these stampedes and causalities caused by them through crowd management and a robust crowd management system in place. The section below elaborates on one such crowd management plan in Pandharpur of Solapur district in Maharashtra. 

Pandharpur 

This is a holy place of Shri. Vitthal and Shri. Rukmini. It is also known as the Southern Kashi of India and Kuldaivat of Maharashtra State. It is located at a distance of 72 kms by road. from Solapur District headquarters. The ancient temple of Shri. Vitthal was renovated in 1195 A.D. There are many other temples of Indian deities and Mathas (Dharmshalas) of many Saints. The Chandrabhaga (Bhima) River flows through the city. A large number of devotees from all over Maharashtra and surrounding States gather at Pandharpur mainly to celebrate the Aashadhi, Kartiki, Maagh, Chaitra Ekadashis every year in addition to the regular rush of devotees every day. The chariots (Palakhi) of various Saints originating from various locations gather at Wakhari, five kms. from Pandharpur, for the Waari festival. The various daily rituals like Kakda Aarati, Mahapooja, Mahanaivedhya, Poshakh, Dhooparati, Padyapooja, Shejarti etc are performed in the main temple of Lord Vitthal. There are 24 temples inside the main temple as one enters from Namdev Payari and exits Pachhim Dwar.

Rituals at Pandharpur 

Pilgrims come by walking barefoot to pandharpur all around Maharashtra state and also from Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and all over India. For Ashadhi Waari, devotees count more than 12-14 lakh during the festival. Usually, devotees take darshan of pundlik before taking a bath in the river ‘Bhima’, locally known as ‘Chandrbhaga’ then devotees do Darshan (glimpse/view) of Vitthal Rukmini and continue with the darshan of mandir inside and outside of the temple. 

To manage such a large crowd in a religious gathering, the district administration of Solapur has following system in place: 

Aims & objectives of ‘Festival Management’ with Disaster Facet 

  • Facilitate the running of a safe, enjoyable and successful event.  
  • Festival arrangement plans for Command (Strategic Planning according to CPM & PERT).
  • Festival arrangement plans for Command Execution (Tactical Planning according to CPM & PERT).
  • Festival contingency planning- Substitute for command (Strategic Planning) & Execution (Tactical Planning) with after moulding by CPM & PERT practices.
  • SOP- Standard Operating Procedure/roles and responsibilities [CAPRA (Corrective and Preventive Action) action plan]

Event management structure/ Organogram

Pinpointing responsibility: –   According to CPM Incident Action Plan must be monitored and must be molded wisely with Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT). And responsibilities of every aspect mentioned in the plan has to be allocated to different officers with clear-cut roles and line of communication. 

EOC (Emergency Operation Centre) –  EOC has been established with resources to cater to the emergency needs of all the chariot routes and their halt points. EOC is also equipped to deal with the emergency needs of devotees.  

Implanting of IRS

  1. Responsible officer will activate the IRS
  2. Incident commander will give the Targets to the commanding staff i.e. deputy Incident Commander, Safety officer, liaison officer & Media Officer,

III. After appointment IRS is a prime duty. Parent posts shall be secondary until the deactivation of IRS, so till then Incident commander is a commanding authority; this shall be the thumb rule of implementing IRS.

  1. Multiple roles and responsibilities can be assigned to a single person only horizontally (The operation section also shall be entitled to a position in the Planning section to avoid duplication).
  2. Training of IRS and sensitizing them toward the Festival Management Plan and contingency planning to commanding general staff shall be given one and half months, before the festival. 
  3. The homework is the most important, consisting of festival procedure and protocol study. Each section chief and branch director of each operation/dept for service & facility will have a pilot visit to the venue, duty location, and command area.

VII. Each section has a meeting over the situation likewise below…

  1. Operation- Ground reality and necessities according to the situation
  2. Planning- Existing resources(all) 
  3. Logistics- Arrangements accordingly 
  4. Each section chief decorates their plan of action with the time limit and CPM

VIII. The deputy incident commander, Safety Officer carries out the PERT activity, and a contingency plan is defined

  1. The Most important thing is the strike team as each facility service department shall define the team and be decorated according to the department’s ‘Need-Situation-based’.

With this incident response system, Solapur district has successfully planned and executed crowd management of millions of pilgrims in Pandharpur.  Solapur is continuously learning, reworking, revising, scrutinizing, updating, and upgrading its IRS plans to serve the people and maintain the glory of Pandharpur pilgrim. 

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