A tech-savvy Maha Kumbh: India aims for a safer religious festival
23/01/2025 06:00
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Authorities using latest tech to manage crowds at Kumbh
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AI-based software helps trace missing, provides crowd
surge
alerts
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Underwater drones monitor for accidents in river
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Multilingual chatbots guide visitors unfamiliar with local
language
By Saurabh Sharma and Tanvi Mehta
PRAYAGRAJ, India, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Inspired by stories
of families separated among the millions celebrating the
weeks-long Maha Kumbh Mela, old Bollywood films often featured
plots in which siblings got lost at the Hindu festival and were
only reunited decades later.
But as Sarita Singh discovered at this year's Maha Kumbh, or
'Great Pitcher Festival', things have changed.
When she was separated from her son and mother-in-law,
authorities turned to state of the art facial recognition
technology to trace them.
Police ran her son's photograph through their software and
one of the 2,760 CCTV cameras covering the festival area in the
holy city of Prayagraj in northern India found him standing near
a tea shop with his grandmother and reunited the family in a
couple of hours.
The 2025 festival has been branded the 'Digital Maha
Kumbh' by the Indian government, and Sarita's story is one of
many that highlight how technology is helping the authorities
better manage what is the world's largest gathering of humanity.
The six-week event began last week and more than 400 million
visitors are expected to join the festivities and take a dip in
the confluence of holy rivers at Prayagraj. Devout Hindus
believe this confers them salvation from the cycle of birth and
death, as well as absolution from their sins.
Managing the crowds is a challenge because the festival site
is spread across 4,000 hectares (9,900 acres), equivalent to
7,500 football fields. Nearly 93 million people visited the
Kumbh in its first nine days until Tuesday, according to
organisers.
Police officers responsible for crowd management said they
were using AI-based software to count the number of people and
prevent stampedes that have marred previous festivals, including
the last event in 2013.
"The crowd is calculated using different methods, aided by
AI, which plays a crucial role like telling us when the crowd
surges," said Amit Kumar, a senior police officer.
The computer software running the cameras also alerts
authorities when it detects a surge in any one section of the
festival city, a fire, or if people cross barricades they are
not supposed to. The alerts are relayed to personnel on the
ground to take corrective action.
"With these markers we are monitoring the crowd round the
clock with the help of over 500 people at the control centre,"
said local police chief Rajesh Dwivedi.
As for finding lost visitors, the technology works only if
the missing person has been captured on the crowd monitoring
cameras, Kumar added.
Elsewhere, underwater drones operating at a depth of up to
100 metres (328.08 ft) send real-time alerts if there is an
accident or a visitor slips and goes under while taking a dip.
Multilingual chatbots on the Kumbh app also provide guidance to
visitors from across India who may not be familiar with the
local language.
"The era in which Maha Kumbh 2025 is being organised is far
ahead in terms of technology," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said
during a visit to Prayagraj last month.
"I hope more and more people are united through this union
of data and technology."
(Reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Prayagraj and Tanvi Mehta in
New Delhi; Editing by YP Rajesh and Kate Mayberry)
((tanvi.mehta@thomsonreuters.com; https://twitter.com/TanviMehta710;))