The Pulse | Environment | South Asia

Mahakumbh 2025 Holds Lessons in Solving India’s Waste Crisis

The Indian government should take a leaf out of the Mahakumbh playbook, ensuring adequate budget allocation for the establishment of waste treatment and waste-to-energy generation facilities in all Indian metros.

Mahakumbh 2025 made headlines last year as the largest human gathering on Earth. Hosting nearly 660 million people over six weeks, this spectacle of faith, tradition, and collective belief also revealed a striking paradox. In a country grappling with chronic urban waste crises, this fleeting megacity managed what Indian cities struggle to achieve: efficient, large-scale waste management. What can India’s cities learn from this temporary, yet highly effective, sanitation model?

The Uttar Pradesh government planned a massive waste management system for the artificially created district, Mahakumbh Nagar, made especially for the Kumbh Mela. The main challenges there were different from regular city waste management. Short-term infrastructure was needed to tackle the varieties and quantity of waste material, from organic, plastic, sanitary, ritual, solid municipal, biochemical to construction and demolition waste.

Coordination among sanitary workers, management of temporary infrastructure, effective planning of logistics, and waste treatment technology were needed to ensure minimal public health risks at the Mahakumbh. The findings from the authors’ unpublished field study, which examines the government’s systematic initiatives to manage the event, show how this model can address waste management challenges, river water contamination and toxic air quality in Indian cities.

As per government estimates, the fair generated an average of 400 metric tons of solid waste. About 15000 sanitation workers worked in multiple shifts to maintain cleanliness across ghats, roads, camps, and public spaces. Their dedication often motivated them to work beyond their shifts, especially during bathing days, when the footfall was significantly high and required the seamless collection, bagging, and transportation of waste material.

The government ensured protective equipment, mechanized tools, trolleys, and transportation systems for worker safety and nonstop cleanliness operations in the mela area. Round-the-clock logistics enabled trucks to transport the waste material to treatment plants. Alongside, NGOs like Ganga Sevaduts volunteers ensured the cleanliness of the ghats by removing devotees’ offerings from the river. This collective approach reinforced the idea of Swachh Bharat (Clean India) in the entire temporary district.

Along with the treatment of solid waste, liquid waste was managed with the intervention of 10 sewage treatment plants (STPs) under the Namami Gange Mission. Every day, 340 million litres of sewage was treated by the facilities available at Salori, Rasulabad and Naini before discharging it to the Ganga and Yamuna, minimizing pollution levels during peak footfall days. Sewage water from drains was intercepted through drain-tapping before reaching the river. This wastewater was redirected through alternative channels to water treatment facilities, where bacteria was used to break down the majority of hazardous substances within. Such technological interventions ensured minimum degradation of river water quality.

The specialized Hybrid Granular Sequencing Batch Reactor (hgSBR) technology – developed by the Bhabha Atomic Research Center under the Indian Government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative and tested for large gatherings during the fair – ensured the effective reduction of biochemical and chemical oxygen demand, which is a measure of pollution levels, to improve water reusability. A real-time monitoring system was used to display water quality in regular intervals for awareness-building about biodiversity, cleanliness, and river conservation under the Namami Gange initiative.

The main challenge for the organizers was the management of human waste. Approximately 12,000 fiber reinforced plastic toilets, 20,000 community urinals, 16,100 prefabricated steel toilets, and 20,000 garbage bins were arranged for visitors’ use. About 3.775 million liner bags were used for managing waste disposal, ensuring the area remained clean despite the huge footfall.

The state government commissioned the first bio-CNG plant before Mahakumbh 2025, further strengthening the sustainability narrative.........

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