There is little to disagree with regarding the baseline concern expressed by Supreme Court Justice Prasanna Varale over the deteriorating condition of Marathi-medium schools and residential ashramshalas across Maharashtra. If foundational educational institutions are genuinely being forced to shut down for want of a relatively small amount of money, the Maharashtra government must answer why it has failed to provide those necessary funds.

However, Justice Varale’s public argument—suggesting that diverting even 0.1 per cent of the money allocated for the Nashik Kumbh Mela could have saved more than 100 Marathi schools—gets the core priorities of governance completely backwards.

Speaking during a visit to his former school in Nashik, Justice Varale asserted that if around Rs 32 crore, representing 0.1 per cent of the Kumbh allocation, had been spent on education, more than 100-150 Marathi schools could have been prevented from shutting down. While concern over educational infrastructure is legitimate, his comparison with the Kumbh is fundamentally flawed. By reducing a massive public safety and civic undertaking to a simplistic trade-off against primary education, such remarks rely on a worn-out rhetorical trope rather than sound administrative logic.

Why Must Public Schools and the Kumbh Be Framed as Competing Priorities?

The primary question that must be directed at Justice Varale’s premise is straightforward: Why must the Kumbh Mela and Marathi schools be presented as competing priorities in the first place?

The state of Maharashtra is fully capable of managing both.

The state government has approved a comprehensive Rs 22,425.39 crore development plan for the upcoming Nashik-Trimbakeshwar Simhastha Kumbh Mela. This extensive plan is not simply a direct cheque being handed over for religious festivities or private rituals. The Kumbh Mela requires enormous temporary and permanent infrastructure because lakhs of devotees will descend on Nashik, creating extraordinary requirements for arterial roads, sanitation, uninterrupted water supply, transportation hubs, emergency medical facilities, crowd management, public safety, and other vital civic infrastructure. The state has constituted dedicated committees and a specialized authority precisely because hosting an event of this scale requires monumental administrative coordination.

Therefore, when an authority figure asserts, “Take 0.1 per cent of the Kumbh allocation and save the schools”, the obvious response should be: Why take it from the Kumbh at all?

Why not demand that the government find Rs 32 crore elsewhere in its massive budget?

Why not ask why public schools were allowed to reach a state of neglect where a modest Rs 32 crore could supposedly make the entire difference between survival and closure?

And if the state has Rs 32 crore to spare, why should that capital become available for schools only after taking it away from an infrastructure programme connected with one of India’s largest religious gatherings?

Civic Infrastructure for the Kumbh Is Not Mere “Religious Expenditure”

The comparison drawn by critics establishes a false and damaging hierarchy: basic education is elevated as the sole essential public good, while the Kumbh Mela is subtly reduced to an expendable, purely cultural or religious expenditure. That is where the underlying argument becomes deeply problematic.

The Kumbh Mela is not a private gathering arranged for a handful of people; it is an ancient civilisational and spiritual congregation observed by millions of Hindus. The elected administration has a fundamental duty to ensure that citizens who participate in it have access to basic civic facilities and, most importantly, can navigate the pilgrimage safely.

Imagine the catastrophic consequences if the government adopted this reductionist view and declared that sanitation, access roads, medical facilities, crowd-control barriers, and public amenities at the Kumbh were unnecessary because the money could instead be spent elsewhere. If a disaster or stampede occurred, the very same critics would quite rightly demand to know why the state failed to prepare for a known mass congregation.

The purpose of Kumbh expenditure is therefore not merely to “spend money on a religious event.” Its explicit goal is to build the physical and administrative infrastructure required to manage a massive human congregation safely, efficiently, and humanely.

Target Inefficiency and Waste, Not the Existence of Public Infrastructure

Opposing wasteful government spending is entirely legitimate. Scrutinising whether every single rupee of public money is being spent transparently and wisely is an essential democratic function. Demanding greater budgetary allocations for public education is equally valid.

However, turning the Kumbh infrastructure expenditure into the primary scapegoat for the systemic decay of Marathi-medium schools is an intellectual evasion.

If Marathi schools are shutting down because of inadequate funding, the state administration must be held directly accountable for failing to allocate those funds within its multi-lakh-crore budget. Period.

The state does not face a binary choice between funding a classroom and building a sanitation block at the Kumbh. It possesses both the capacity and the constitutional duty to deliver both.

The Broader Landscape of Government Spending and Selective Scrutiny

This debate exposes a much larger issue regarding state priorities and selective political critique. Maharashtra carries several massive welfare commitments, including the flagship Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, under which eligible women receive Rs 1,500 per month. The welfare scheme itself provides for this recurring monthly benefit starting from July 2024.

One can readily argue that targeted welfare schemes serve an important social purpose and that vulnerable beneficiaries should not be deprived of promised support. However, that reality is precisely why governments must be evaluated on their overall fiscal discipline rather than having one specific Hindu cultural congregation singled out as the root cause of every budgetary shortfall.

If a mere Rs 32 crore is the sum required to rescue 100-150 schools, why is the broader debate not focused on identifying Rs 32 crore within a state budget running into lakhs of crores? Why is the Kumbh consistently singled out as the villain?

Would this identical framing ever be applied to large-scale state expenditures associated with other religious traditions? Would any public commentator or jurist casually suggest that 0.1 per cent of the public funds allocated for an Islamic or Christian religious congregation should be diverted to preserve vernacular schools?

While that comparison may be uncomfortable for some, it is an essential question to raise. Public policy and judicial commentary must not operate on the biased assumption that expenditure linked to Hindu religious traditions is inherently frivolous, while public spending on other religious communities is granted immediate legitimacy under India's secular framework.

The execution of the Kumbh development plan deserves strict scrutiny against inflated costs, project delays, or financial mismanagement. Yet, the basic decision to fund infrastructure for millions of pilgrims is entirely legitimate. In practice, pitting schools against the Kumbh provides the state government with an easy excuse: officials can claim that education and pilgrimage infrastructure are competing priorities forcing difficult budgetary trade-offs. The government must not be allowed that convenient escape.

Public Governance Demands Support for Both Heritage and Education

A government capable of delivering a massive, modern infrastructure plan for the Simhastha Kumbh Mela must be equally capable of ensuring that Marathi-medium schools do not collapse from basic financial neglect. These obligations are not mutually exclusive.

Justice Varale’s attention to the educational sector touches on real administrative shortcomings, including the poor condition of residential ashramshalas and the urgent need for modernized classrooms, computer labs, and scientific equipment. However, the remedy cannot involve pitting one legitimate public obligation against another.

The core question is not whether a small fraction of Kumbh funds could balance the education budget. The real question is: Why did the state government need a public reminder to fund Marathi schools in the first place?

There is a fundamental governance principle at stake. The state of Maharashtra should not treat necessary investments in the Kumbh Mela as an embarrassment. It is an extraordinary gathering that demands robust civic preparation. Providing adequate sanitation to prevent open defecation, arranging clean drinking water, expanding roads, setting up emergency hospitals, and implementing modern crowd safety measures are basic administrative responsibilities, not optional luxuries.

If the state successfully manages this massive congregation while keeping every vernacular school fully funded and operational, it is fulfilling its basic duties. If it fails, the fault lies entirely in administrative mismanagement and broken budgeting, not in the civilisational gathering of devotees.

Moving Past False Binaries in Public Policy

The government must be pressured directly to rescue and support vernacular schools. It must be held accountable for upgrading ashramshalas, modernizing state classrooms, and auditing inefficient welfare programs. At the same time, it must ensure that every rupee allocated for the Kumbh Mela is executed with total efficiency and transparency.

Maharashtra must reject the false choice of schools versus the Kumbh. Both deserve to survive, and both deserve institutional backing.

Challenging the Trope of Pitting Faith Against Civic Welfare

The comparison of temples, pilgrimages, and sacred infrastructure against schools and hospitals follows a well-worn rhetorical pattern. For years, this framing has been used to question the legitimacy of public spending and cultural preservation related to Hindu heritage.

The narrative is constructed around a superficial dilemma: why build a temple when a hospital could be erected instead? Why maintain a religious congregation when those resources could fund classrooms? The flaw in this logic is not that schools and healthcare facilities are unimportant—they are essential pillars of society. The flaw lies in the flawed assumption that funding public welfare requires delegitimising cultural and spiritual heritage.

This same rhetoric was deployed during the decades-long civilisational struggle surrounding the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya, where certain ideological factions repeatedly asked why a hospital or university could not replace the Ram Mandir.

Yet public infrastructure and sacred heritage do not exist in opposition. A nation needs modern hospitals, and it retains the full right to build its temples. A society must fund its schools, and its people have the fundamental right to celebrate and preserve their civilisational gatherings. Setting up an artificial conflict between development and tradition only serves to place cultural heritage permanently on the defensive.

True governance does not require choosing between cultural preservation and public welfare; an effective state can, and must, provide for both.