Three is a crowd. What’s 250 million?

Today is Pagdi Sambhal Diwas for Indian farmers The original song Pagdi Sambhal jatta written by Banke Dayal in 1906 tells Sikh farmers to hang on to their turbans hold on to their dignity and fight against the ruthless and crushing agrarian regulations of the British Today the same protest is back and the agrarian laws look equally unscrupulous but the oppressor it seems is now withinIf a law is unjust it should not matter whether one person protests or a million do Still numbers matter If an aerial photograph showed the 134 kms of Delhirsquos Rajpath jampacked with protesters from Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate you would surely nod and say ldquoThis must be some serious issuerdquo But if I asked you to estimate the size of that crowd yoursquod be a messWe are told between 200000 and 300000 farmers have been protesting in and around Delhi since November against three agrarian laws rammed through by the government without much debate On November 26 last year in the thick of the pandemic we heard that 250 million Indians nationwide went on strike in support of the farmers On Republic Day ldquotens of thousandsrdquo of farmers in ldquo15000 tractorsrdquoreportedly upended the ceremonies at Delhirsquos Red FortNitish Pahwa writing in Slate online joyously called it ldquothe biggest protest in world historyrdquo though his first sentence sneakily hedges the bet by adding ldquomay have beenrdquoThe same number 250 million was cited in the January 2020 edition of The Wire online describing the nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment ActIn 2003 the world had seen what was then described as the largest single coordinated protests in history Some 10 to 15 million people estimates vary widely marched in more than 600 cities against George W Bushrsquos Iraq war They made no difference of courseWho counted these numbers How do you count 250 million people marching all over the country who came together without even much noticeI instinctively mistrust numbers especially those ending with several zeroes and so should you Crowd counting has never been a science as much as a bestguess aggregated using several methods and perspectives However its importance has been spiking sharply of late As teeming populations of the homeless flee from war zones seek sanctuary from droughts and drug lords or march against authoritarian regimes the need for better estimates has become urgentBetween us I would not be able to tell apart a crowd of 25 crores from one of 25 crores and yoursquod be lying if you said you could When there are too many people we lean on words like unprecedented massive and humongous We humans really struggle with visualising numbers larger than a few dozensThere are several algorithms for estimating crowd size some newer ones even drawing data from drones and tethered balloons with 360deg cameras but I would rather ask why we estimate crowds than howThere is assumed to be a direct correlation between the number of people who show up for a cause and the importance of that cause It is therefore a given that the organisers of a rally mdash such as the Samyukta Kisan Morcha spearheading the farmersrsquo movement mdash stand to benefit by overstating the turnouts while their targets the government have a stake in minimising themIn other words there is no reason why any number you read is likely to be trueI have been trying to find out how many attended 2019rsquos sustained prodemocracy rallies in Hong Kong The New York Times estimated that the protest on Human Rights Day stretched ldquoseveral milesrdquo As many as 800000 people attended the march they reported but their source happened to be the Civil Human Rights Front the organisers of the march The Chinese government might have chosen to lop off a few zeroesCrowd science says that area and density are two characteristics of crowds The tightest packing called mosh pit density after rowdy crowds at heavy metal concerts is 25 square feet per person In such a crowd you would not fall down even if you could somehow lift both feet off the groundYou should be astonished if crowd estimates in the media are based on anything but wishful thinking If all the alleged 250 million who protested in support of Indian farmers on November 26 had been packed into the gardens of Rajpath at mosh pit density they would have covered no more 737 of the area of those gardens Suddenly the nationwide protest would have felt more like a congregation than a revolutionHerersquos a reality check mdash how many people would you say accompanied Gandhi in his historic Salt March that sparked Indiarsquos freedom movement The disappointing or perhaps inspiring answer is mdash 79Here viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcom Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom The views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper