​Lessons unlearned: On the stampede in Nalanda, Bihar

Another stampede and another probe. India seems to have learned little about crowd management despite a series of stampedes in recent months. At the Sheetla Mata temple in Bihar’s Nalanda district on Tuesday, nine persons died, eight of them women, and a dozen were injured. On the occasion of the last Monday of the month of Chaitra, more than 10,000 people came to the temple, which typically sees only a few hundred devotees. Police say they had no forewarning of a large gathering, though many view their absence as a consequence of the bandobust requirements for the Nalanda University convocation, which was attended by the President of India that day. Priests had allegedly taken money for the special darshan and allowed the bribe givers through the exit, which became clogged. The entrance was practically blocked as people tried to get in. One death from a likely fall was enough to trigger panic. What happened was clearly avoidable, as are all stampedes that routinely occur in India. For instance, too many people trying to enter a packed stadium is a well-studied disaster scenario and lessons have been learned from it in many countries. However, the RCB victory celebration in Bengaluru, in June 2025, led to an avoidable buildup of the crowd in the city, which was then led into the already full stadium.

Crowd science and crowd management are well-defined subjects in academia in the developed world. While crowd science deals largely with planned gatherings, there is a whole body of literature on unplanned, spontaneous gatherings, which are often marked by emotionally charged crowds, such as celebrity sightings and religious events. The latter is typical in India and is driven by digital communities. Crowd management combines quantitative techniques with qualitative methods and theories. For instance, the science stipulates that if there are more than five people per square metre, movement will be constrained, requiring intervention. Qualitative methods, for example, include ruses such as installing mirrors to make people see themselves, reinforcing individual identity, which can be lost and lead to irrational, panic-stricken behaviour. Contrary to popular impression, expressive crowds gathering for religious reasons are open to leadership and guidance. In India, the police learn crowd control on the field and through experience shared by veterans, who discuss using mobile loudspeakers to calm crowds and maintain order through clear instructions. Crowd control and management must become subjects of serious academic study so that measures to prevent accidents are commonly known and implemented across India.