Kumbh Mela, the world’s most grandiose religious festival, saw an unusual group of visitors for an unusual purpose this year. A multi-disciplinary team of over 50 faculty members, staff and student researchers from Harvard Universityvisited the event to document and analyse the processes involved in its successful functioning. The year-long inter-faculty project, ‘The Mappingof the Kumbh Mela,’ co-ordinated by the South Asia Institute at the university and the Harvard Global Health Institute , focuses on urbanisation. Rahul Mehrotra, professor and chair, department of urban planning and design, Graduate School of Design, who led a team of graduate student researchers, says the goal was to map the mela. Read More
