Then again, visitors from the remotest corners of India can enjoy access to the kind of sanitation and health services that are unthinkable back home. Consider: 76 per cent of Indian households have no access to toilets. Those who visit the Maha Kumbh have access to more than 40,000 toilets and urinals - a luxury even in India's capital city. Where few Indians have access to a hospital or a primary health care centre in their daily lives, visitors to the Kumbh have a 100-bed hospital, 12 health centres, 243 doctors, 247 paramedics and 600 other medical staff at their disposal. All this and non-stop electricity and water, too! All of these are facilities that citizens in developed cities, including many Southeast Asian ones, take for granted.
Even more incredibly, this bandobast - which is replicated every four years, and not just in the 12 years of the Maha Kumbh - is possible in one of India's most stagnant and corrupt states, Uttar Pradesh, where the hallmark remains its flyblown moffusil towns. Indeed, the stampede at Allahabad railway station, which killed 36 people, was outside the purview of the mela organisers and remains a stark reminder of the real India. The Kumbh's temporary urban paradise is a mocking reminder of what rapidly urbanising India isn't. There are lessons for modern urban town planners, of course, but they're obvious, age-old ones that hardly require a mega religious event to underline. In that sense and no other, the Kumbh's uber-efficiency is a poor reflection on India.