From triumph to tragedy

What should have been a jubilant homecoming for the Royal Challengers Bangalore team after their first-ever IPL victory in 18 years turned, instead, into a harrowing tragedy on June 5 in Bengaluru. As roaring fans thronged the Chinnaswamy Stadium, desperate to greet their heroes, celebration gave way to catastrophe. The stadium, built to accommodate 35,000, was engulfed by an overwhelming wave of humanity-estimates suggest between two to three lakh people-creating a situation where disaster became a grim inevitability.The sheer scale of the crowd that formed outside and within the stadium made safe movement impossible. RCB fans and excited Bengalurians converged with unbridled enthusiasm, but as the venue overflowed, the risks multiplied. In tightly packed crowds, a sudden surge or panic quickly morphs into an unstoppable and merciless force. For those caught in the center, any push in the melee can become fatal-people unable to move or escape are all too easily trampled. This is what happened and there was nothing anyone could have done. It is clear that this tragedy could have been prevented had authorities and organizers taken adequate preventive measures. With proper planning, rigorous enforcement of capacity limits, and effective crowd management, the risk of a stampede could have been drastically reduced, if not eliminated. Yet, as often happens in the heady rush of mass celebration, these basic safeguards seem to have been forgotten; the drive to be part of history overtook rational concerns for safety. The outcome, sadly, was predictable when the gathering swelled far beyond safe limits.In the days following the tragedy, politics inevitably took center stage. The BJP wasted no time in blaming the Congress-led state government for lax administration and poor planning. In response, the Congress government insisted the tragedy was spontaneous, insisting it could not be held accountable for every action of an unruly crowd. Such blame games, while routine, offer little solace or solution to the families shattered by loss.These tragedies are, unfortunately, not without precedent. Earlier this year, the Mahakumbh Mela in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, witnessed a deadly stampede fueled by similar factors: poor crowd management, inadequate planning, and the ever-prevailing influence of VIP culture. The incident, which took place under a BJP government, was quickly overshadowed by political defensiveness and accusations of media exaggeration. Ironically, the same BJP now seizes the opportunity to score points in Karnataka while glossing over similar failures in its own bastions.Ultimately, the devastating loss suffered by families in Bengaluru stampede cannot be compensated by blame games or ex-gratia payments. Political parties must resist the temptation to capitalize on tragedy. What is urgently needed is a unified commitment to public safety-one that transcends partisanship. The central government must step in to enact strict laws that will govern crowd management at large-scale events, while state authorities must diligently implement and enforce these measures that hold organizers totally responsible for crowd intake.If real lessons are learned from this latest heartbreak, then it will finally ensure that large-scale public gatherings are joyous and safe, not potential disasters-in-waiting.