On 4 March, the Kumbh Mela, the largest religious gathering in the world, in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh came to an end. The state’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, headed by Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath, had spent a staggering $600 million to host the Hindu gathering – the most expensive one to date, just ahead of the general elections. A sizeable chunk of that money went into hundreds of life-size cutouts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the chief minister, and giant hoardings blaring messages of their accomplishments in the last four years, which accosted the gathered millions.
This is the same state, however, where in 2017, hundreds of children had died at a government hospital in Gorakhpur, Adityanath’s own constituency, after the hospital allegedly failed to pay an oxygen bill of $112,557. For weeks Modi did not comment on the deaths – even though they roiled India – and when he did, he clubbed them with natural disasters!
