Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra shared a blog post by Harvard Professor highlighting the amalgamation of traditions and modernity at the Maha Kumbh Mela 2025.
In a post on the social media platform X, Mahindra highlighted a part from blog titled 'Hot Chai, Robotics at the Maha Kumbh Mela, World's largest Gathering of Humanity' by Prof Tarun Khanna of the Harvard Business School.
Para commandos sipping on hot chai. (Photo shared by Prof Tarun Khanna on X)
His daily observations provide a fascinating view into the happenings there. His blog post read: “Hot Chai, Robotics at the Maha Kumbh Mela, World’s largest Gathering of Humanity Mahakumbh 2025 is underway in India, the largest gathering of humanity in a single location, collectively visited by 250 million people over a few weeks, probably peak daily attendance of 50 million in a pop-up megacity. The ‘city’ is itself a marvel, built on the banks of a regularly receding holy river, to be dismantled ecologically efficiently at the end. The picture shows India’s paracommandos, deployed for security at the holy gathering. They are backed by a space-age monitoring infrastructure – NASA style control room plus reconnaissance and surveillance drones plus distributed sensors - for problem resolution primarily and, of course, security if and as needed. Marriage of the traditional holy event and modern techniques. And the fun part is the soldiers holding hot cups of steaming chai, India’s daily drink of choice. Chaipoint is the entrepreneurial venture selected by the Government to deliver perhaps 20 odd million cups of tea at the Kumbh. The stores are also pop-up stores, the chai is made by state-of-the-art robots, best in class globally, delivered to consistency and high quality, at very low prices. Eat your heart out, Starbucks. Again, traditional chai married with modern technology.”
