A tech-savvy Maha Kumbh: India aims for a safer religious festival

But as Sarita Singh discovered at this year's Maha Kumbh, or 'Great Pitcher Festival', things have changed.

When she was separated from her son and mother-in-law, authorities turned to state of the art facial recognition technology to trace them.

Police ran her son's photograph through their software and one of the 2,760 CCTV cameras covering the festival area in the holy city of Prayagraj in northern India found him standing near a tea shop with his grandmother and reunited the family in a couple of hours.

The 2025 festival has been branded the 'Digital Maha Kumbh' by the Indian government, and Sarita's story is one of many that highlight how technology is helping the authorities better manage what is the world's largest gathering of humanity.

The six-week event began last week and more than 400 million visitors are expected to join the festivities and take a dip in the confluence of holy rivers at Prayagraj. Devout Hindus believe this confers them salvation from the cycle of birth and death, as well as absolution from their sins.

Managing the crowds is a challenge because the festival site is spread across 4,000 hectares (9,900 acres), equivalent to 7,500 football fields. Nearly 93 million people visited the Kumbh in its first nine days until Tuesday, according to organisers.

Police officers responsible for crowd management said they were using AI-based software to count the number of people and prevent stampedes that have marred previous festivals, including the last event in 2013.

"The crowd is calculated using different methods, aided by AI, which plays a crucial role like telling us when the crowd surges," said Amit Kumar, a senior police officer.

The computer software running the cameras also alerts authorities when it detects a surge in any one section of the festival city, a fire, or if people cross barricades they are not supposed to. The alerts are relayed to personnel on the ground to take corrective action.

"With these markers we are monitoring the crowd round the clock with the help of over 500 people at the control centre," said local police chief Rajesh Dwivedi.

As for finding lost visitors, the technology works only if the missing person has been captured on the crowd monitoring cameras, Kumar added.

Elsewhere, underwater drones operating at a depth of up to 100 metres (328.08 ft) send real-time alerts if there is an accident or a visitor slips and goes under while taking a dip. Multilingual chatbots on the Kumbh app also provide guidance to visitors from across India who may not be familiar with the local language.

"The era in which Maha Kumbh 2025 is being organised is far ahead in terms of technology," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said during a visit to Prayagraj last month.

"I hope more and more people are united through this union of data and technology."