Kumbh mystique draws Harvard dons

Kumbh mystique draws Harvard dons

Praveen Dass TNN

    Besides the millions of pilgrims, ashsmeared ascetics, doe-eyed starlets and wide-eyed tourists that usually flock to the Mahakumbh Mela in Allahabad, there is a new class of visitors the religious gathering has attracted this year: academics and students from Harvard University.
    Intrigued by the sheer scale and complex dynamics of the mela, a group of top Harvard dons have been quietly working on a big multi-disciplinary project to study its various aspects. The effort, dubbed ‘Mapping India’s Kumbh Mela’, is underpinned by the desire to figure out just how tens of millions of Indians gather peacefully in one spot to celebrate this ancient rite of religious passage.
    “There’s no doubt that the mela is an incredible, even astonishing, human undertaking. Just the organizational logistics involved in managing so many people over a few months in one spot is tremendous. Our project seeks to understand this unique phenomenon better,” says Diana Eck, a key faculty member associated with the project.
    Eck’s students will examine various rituals, groupings and traditions as well as the slow-bubbling sense of environmental awareness she terms the ‘Green Kumbh’. Academics intrigued by Kumbh mela’s size
Tarun Khanna of Harvard Business School is fascinated by the massive temporary township — he calls it a ‘popup megacity’ — that springs up on the sandy banks of the converging rivers. It is spread over 1,940 hectares this year.
    “To make an inexact but useful comparison, consider how large, bustling cities like Istanbul or Lagos took several decades to go from populations of 1 million to 10 million.
    “At the Kumbh, it’s quite amazing for scholars like us to observe such speedy migration into a city like this. It makes for a unique, rapidly moving laboratory — and offers us a special opportunity to study everything from the process of organization to the interplay of commerce and technology,” he says.
    Project members examined the pop-up city being erected just as they will continue to study it when the township is deconstructed in March. They will also study a whole host of logistical activities during the festival.
    Public health researchers will spread out in Allahabad to examine how the sanitation infrastructure holds up, and how the hundreds of medical clinics across the township will function.
    Much of this will tie into one of Harvard’s great expectations from the event: ‘Big Data’.
    Now a big buzzword in some academic circles, the big data that will be generated from the Mela is something that may lead to entirely new conclusions, say these researchers.
    Meena Sonea Hewett, associate director of the South Asia Institute at the university, which is helping coordinate this project in association with the Harvard Global Health Institute, points to one interesting aspect --- mapping the use of cellphone networks at the mela.
    Data like this could help researchers better understand geographic patterns with pilgrims, for instance. As Khanna stresses, “It could become one of the biggest datasets around; it’s something even physicists and public health experts might find useful in many ways.”
    Khanna also emphasizes that a few findings are certainly going to end up in some of his business school’s famous case studies.
    “We’ll look to roll them out in our classrooms soon, and then across the world”.