In April began the planning of the Kumbh Nagri. In October they secured its space and laid down roads in November. InDecember they marked the plots and allocated land. Come January Kumbh Nagri turned into a mega city of tents, tin, and plywood: resplen…
It’s 1:30am and we are now in Benaras. We delayed our morning departure to spend another day at the Kumbh. Mauni Amavasya was not the uneventful day the organizers had hoped it would be. Officials say that 30 million people (one and a half times Bo…
NY Times Blog on HSPH Project Can Big Data From Epic Indian Pilgrimage Help Save Lives? Big data, meet humanity. The South Asia Institute at Harvard has sent a team of public health specialists to one of the largest gatherings in the world, the Kumbh M…
February 9, 2013: The crowds in the Kumbh Nagri have swollen to fill the sandy Gangetic floodplain as the largest bathing day begins tomorrow. Today the roads brimmed with pilgrims on their way to and from the Sangam; the barricades rolled to block all…
(I drafted these comments in response to a query from Times of India directed through Meena). Questions 1) Purpose of the “Mapping the Kumbh Mela”- South Asia Institute 2) Could you elaborate on the focus of the project? – Faculty member at the S…
Photos posted on SAI’s Kumbh Mela site! https://mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu/kumbh-mela/ We have posted a first batch of photos from the trip, and will be updating photos regularly!Filed under: All, Photos
February 5th Today, the second team from the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights arrived at the Kumbh Nagri to continue to study the public health implications of the Kumbh Mela. The public health team that visited the Mela along with the rest of th…
It is a bit surreal to think that we have already been back to Cambridge, back to classes and meetings and syllabi, for a whole week. By comparison, the few days we spent at the Kumbh Mela pursuing our various forms research somehow seem more meaningfu…