Editorial: Cricket Is The Biggest Draw For Crowds

The iconic Marine Drive in Mumbai turned into a sea of humanity on Thursday evening as hundreds of thousands thronged every available inch to celebrate the T20 World Cup win and get a glimpse of the players atop an open bus. Cricket unites and excites Indians as little else does with the exception of religion. The heartbreak of millions of cricket fans in November 2023 when Team India could not cross the line to win the 50-overs World Cup was healed to an extent when the Rohit Sharma-led side picked up the T20 trophy in Barbados last week. Since then, India has been in a celebratory mode. However, the tightly-packed crowds at Marine Drive, euphoric and exultant, were one scream or push away from a stampede and a terrible disaster. Just a day prior, 116 had died in a stampede in Hathras trying to reach a self-declared godman.

That no major or fatal incident occurred in Mumbai is a miracle in itself; a few children were lost, there were cases of theft and fainting reported, and there was a load of garbage to be cleared the next morning. The relatively peaceful and orderly crowd allowed the Mumbai Police to claim success in crowd control and management of major events. Yet, officers must be aware that things can go wrong at the slightest whiff. Whether Mumbai Police and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation are prepared to handle such an event is, at best, speculative because neither agency has taken the public into confidence about its crowd management techniques — or even put out basic alerts on what people should do or avoid in densely crowded places. With technology now available to monitor crowd movement, management should be easier.

The larger socio-political question is different. If so many hundreds of thousands of Mumbaikars could come out in the rain on Marine Drive and pack the Wankhede Stadium to show appreciation for Team India, to celebrate with the team, why is it that not even a fraction of this came out to protest against the rapes and continuing ethnic violence in Manipur and Gaza, the unspooling mess that has become of entrance exams like the National Eligibility and Entrance Test, and mob lynching incidents that are becoming more common by the week? It is not that Mumbai cannot show up in strength to make a point; it chooses not to when it comes to taking a stand or challenging the powers-that-be.