Inside the Big, Fat Maha Kumbh Economy

The spiritual congregation is expected to generate financial transactions worth billions of dollars

- Devina Sengupta

About 40 years ago, Mahavir Singh tasted his first success in business. Just eight years old, he took his family's camel to the famous Pushkar fair, near his hometown in Rajasthan. He let tourists ride the camel and earned ₹1,000 in a day. Fairs, or melas, he realized, were a great place to make quick money. The thought stayed with him.

At Prayagraj, where the Maha Kumbh mela is being held this year, Singh has invested over ₹4 crore to install 350 tents. Some of them are luxury tents. They resemble camps erstwhile royalty rested in during their hunting safaris, replete with classy linen and wooden furniture. At the higher end, a luxury tent can come for ₹40,000 a night.

Singh is hoping there will be enough takers; he has a huge loan to service. But then, the river banks at Prayagraj are now dotted with thousands of similar or even more luxurious tents.

They are all eyeing a piece of the same pie-the well-heeled pilgrim. They have started arriving in hordes to participate in the world's largest spiritual congregation that includes ascetics, saints, sadhus, sadhvis and kalpvasis. Between 13 January, when the mela, held once in 144 years began, and 26 February, when it will end, the city is expecting over 400 million people, higher than the population of the US.

A mini city, divided into 25 sectors, has come up on the banks of the three rivers (Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati) at Prayagraj-the mela spans about 4,000 hectares. Besides hospitality, visitors need a huge array of products and services. Businesses, small and big, want to latch on to that opportunity, just like Singh. In fact, Kumbh has been a trade hotspot for many centuries-Chinese monk Xuanzang, who travelled to India in the 7th century AD, made a mention of the congregation.