Magazine : 
Successful Kumbh Earns Akhilesh a Harvard Invite
Harvard's year-long inter-faculty project, coordinated by its South Asia Institute and its Global Health Institute, was keeping in mind the "focus on urbanization", a faculty member told IANS.
"The very fact that to accommodate the millions of pilgrims who journey to Allahabad to bathe in the sacred confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna, the Uttar Pradesh government created a temporary city in the flood plain of the river - that is worth a study," an official said.
"The city, laid out on a grid, was constructed and then "deconstructed" in a matter of weeks. Within the grid, multiple aspects of contemporary urbanism come to fruition, including spatial zoning, an electricity grid, food and water distribution, physical infrastructure construction, mass vaccinations, public gathering spaces, and nighttime social events," the official said.
The multi-disciplinary team from Harvard had studied various aspects of Kumbh 2013 including urbanism, business and public health and religion at the mela.
Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and India studies at Harvard, led a group of graduate and undergraduate researchers who studied the ritual use of flowers and their environmental impact, the diversity of sacred trees, pollution and the effects of dams on the Ganga, the relationship between faith and science and the 'green' Kumbh movement.
The study of urbanism at the Kumbh was done by a team led by Rahul Mehrotra, who chairs the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard. Students documented, at a macro-level, the spaces at the Kumbh mela campus using two and three dimensional media, including plans and sections, diagrams and perspectives, as well as aerial photography.
"Among other things, the group explored how the temporal, fleeting events, including the routes and the physical structure of settlements functioned together and how the systems that emerged could be applied to sustainable urban design in other nations and contexts," Ashok Sharma, the media in-charge of Kumbh, told IANS.
The health surveillance study by Harvard students has also documented various measures taken by the state government to control outbreak of diseases and maintain high standards of sanitation at the Kumbh.
Describing the Kumbh mela campus as "India's mega pop-up city" the reports of various studies, researchers say, have been illuminating. Akhilesh Yadav's visit, an official said, is not only set to shed more light on various aspects of arrangements during Kumbh but would also "pep up the credibility of the state government on the international stage".
