India hopes Mahakumbh will bring in investors, but economists are sceptical

India hopes Mahakumbh will bring in investors, but economists are sceptical

Arvind Agrawal, an Indian-born businessman based in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, has been providing stationery items throughout India for 40 years.

The city is currently hosting the Mahakumbh, often simply called the Kumbh, the world’s largest religious gathering of Hindus.

Callers asking for the prices of key rings, calendars, and diaries, all of which depict a Mahakumbh smart gimmick that has caused sales to rocket, appear on his mobile phone every few minutes.

Due to the high demand for our products, I haven’t slept for more than four to five hours at night for the past three months. Agrawal tells Al Jazeera that the shop is kept operational longer than the factory’s normal schedule for delivering orders.

The extra demand is going to boost his annual revenues of about $570, 000 to more than $660, 000, he says.

According to the planets’ alignment with the stars, the Mahakumbh is held every 12 years in four holy places in India, Prayagraj, Haridwar, Nashik, and Ujjain, on rotation. Hindus view the festival as an opportunity to cleanse their sins and seek spiritual retribution.

The festival is planned to commemorate the split of the amrit, the elixir of immortality, that fell on various locations in India as the gods guarded it from demons, according to mythological legends.

The Sangam event, which took place on the banks of the Ganges, Yamuna, and Saraswati Rivers in Prayagraj on January 13 and ended on February 26th, is expected to draw in tens of millions of Hindu devotees and saints.

The festival is being held on 10, 000 acres (4, 046 hectares) where makeshift tents have been constructed to accommodate monks and devotees.

Arvind Agrawal and his son Shivam have seen a boom in demand for Mahakumbh-themed stationery items&nbsp,]Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

Massive business opportunity

Apart from its spiritual importance, Mahakumbh is also a massive business opportunity for the city’s entrepreneurs, the government says. Over 400 million people are likely to visit the city during the 45-day festival to pray and take a bath in the Ganges.

The volume being hacked is staggering.

Local businesses will make close to $3 billion, according to Mahendra Goyal, president of the Confederation of All India Traders in Uttar Pradesh. According to state chief minister Yogi Adityanath, the festival is projected to bring in more than $2 trillion in revenue for the nation, according to the analysis of the 58-pound sum spent by each of the 400 million people who are expected to attend the event.

The state has placed hoardings up all over the state’s airports in addition to using social media influencers to promote the event.

According to Mukesh Kumar Meshram, principal secretary of the state Department of Tourism, “luxury cottages have been constructed, and the tour packages have been made for devotees coming to the Kumbh.”

The tourist boom has undoubtedly had an impact on some businesses. Ashish Mittal, 48, a businessman who sells paper cups and plates among other disposable items, claimed that his company has experienced rapid growth in recent days as a result of the demand from the numerous community kitchens that are regularly open to the public.

“Disposables are in huge demand. We usually do a turnover of 40 million rupees]$462, 086] every financial year, but we are expecting additional sales of 15 million rupees]$173, 282] due to the Mahakumbh”, Mittal told Al Jazeera.

Similarly, Vritti iMedia, a company that sells advertisement space on LED screens on moving vans, has snapped up multiple clients for the duration of the Mahakumbh.

“Our 25 display vans are moving through the festival area, catching millions of eyeballs,” said one witness. Because of its enormous scale, we anticipate earning four to five times as much money as the previous Kumbhs, says co-founder Rajesh Radhakrishnan.

Mahakumbh business
The state and federal governments have erected hoardings to promote their projects]Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

The state government has pumped 70 billion rupees ($808.5m) into developing infrastructure, including water and waste management, and fixing roads and highways. The federal government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has chipped in close to $250m.

Senior state government officials tell Al Jazeera that the investment is also intended to draw investors because of the upgraded infrastructure.

According to KV Raju, economic adviser to the state chief minister, “the massive arrangements like building up 150, 000 tents, building state highways, improving the rail and air connectivity are meant to show to the investors that the government is not only capable of organizing such a mega event but also can create livelihood for several thousand people,” according to Raju.

Some economists, however, are sceptical of the government’s claim of generating $2 trillion from the event.

The majority of devotees who visit the Kumbh do so in groups, belong to the lower classes of society, and don’t even have $58 to spend on themselves, according to Sunil Kumar Sinha, an economist who was previously the chief economist at India Ratings, a Fitch company.

The government has to spend massively on their accommodation, safety and food for 45 days and that could outstrip the investment claimed publicly by the government, Sinha said.

Only those who are directly benefited by tourism and hospitality are true. There were no investments in other sectors, despite the fact that those with a focus on tourism received a portion of the business even in Ayodhya, where the grand Ram Temple was dedicated last year. He continued, “Events like the Mahakumbh are merely focused on showcasing the good governance of the government and nothing else.”

Mahakumbh business
Processions are part of the Mahakumbh in Prayagraj]Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

Despite all the arrangements, issues persist, and some devoted fans have complained that the fairground has not enough shelter for them.

“We are compelled to sleep with blankets we brought from our homes under the open sky in the chilling cold. Accommodation and food arrangements are not made. As eating out is very expensive in this country, we have prepared some dry food items, says homemaker Sunita Roy, 45, who traveled with a group from Indore, Madhya Pradesh, to the Mahakumbh.

Sayantan Mukherjee, a 25-year-old software engineer from Kolkata, said his main problem was the unhygienic toilets at the fairgrounds.

The government has made good progress with managing traffic and crowds, but the lack of sanitation and human waste is the main issue. It is impossible to even enter and stand there for a second, but they are the only option”, he said.

Soaring ticket prices are another issue.

Airfare to Prayagraj from cities like New Delhi and Kolkata is anywhere from 20, 000 to 35, 000 rupees ($230 to $405), many times the standard fare of under 7, 000 rupees ($81).

Source: Aljazeera

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