Is Osho Auditorium next Bhopal?

This article discusses the possibility of the feet pounding WHO stage of Dynamic meditation and evidence of poor construction standards at the Pune resort combining to produce a disastrous scenario. It also mentions problems with cabled trees.

Significant stressors to a bridge can come not just from the obvious vehicular traffic and from powerful winds, but also from pedestrians (walking or jogging). A tightly packed bunch of marathon fun-runners pounding their way across a bridge can be a significant stress if the joggers become synchronised in their step, and if the step frequency fits with the natural frequency of the structure.

High profile examples of pedestrian induced bridge vibrations include the 8-lane Auckland Harbour Bridge in New Zealand, the London Millennium Bridge and the Passerelle Solferino in Paris.

Relevant news – you may well be wondering – applies to the (Osho) International Meditation Resort in Pune, India – a resort that claims to have over 100, 000 visitors annually. In particular I refer here to its new almighty, award winning, towering, monolithic, pyramid-like meditation auditorium.

The news is that this building has had cement failure, and a neighbouring building (constructed as part of the same project) has had failings due to mixing down of cement (not using enough cement in the concrete mixture).

The interesting question is what happens to the brickwork, structural steel, cement, welds, and bolts, when the devoted Osho sannyassins pound the floor of the Auditorium during their controversially active morning Dynamic meditation?

The following example shows how construction work at the resort is not necessarily of high standard. A brick-layer came to the resort to do some work-as-meditation. He was put to work supervising labourers doing construction projects. The summary of the scenario – as told by him to me – was that the workers thought that he would obviously not know anything about construction work, and so they could pull the wool over his eyes (so to speak). He was of the opinion that they were trying to steal cement. What they did was overstate the amount of cement needed and used for any particular job. Now a supervisor who has no idea of construction would not have a clue how much cement is needed for a job. However this person happened to be a brick-layer by trade.

I don't recall the exact details: whether they were stock-piling cement on the side or whether at the end of the job it appeared that all the cement was used, yet could not possibly have been: someone who knows about such things would be able to look at the colour of the concrete to see how much cement is used in the concrete mixture. The likely scenario put forward to me was that over-quoting and supposedly using this excessive amount meant that the labourers were free to steal a certain amount of valuable cement.

Now if someone wanted to investigate the quality of cement work on a project they could easily look at the amount of cement used, and draw conclusions accordingly. However in this case the conclusions would be wrong.

So what about the mixing down of cement that I identified on the project that included the grand meditation pyramid? One possibility is that the correct amount of cement was quoted, with lesser cement used, and some of the valuable product strangely disappearing.

While I am on the subject, one last little twig. Trees and branches have historically been neglected, and a high-tension cabling system winds trees up into a dangerous state of tension.

It has been some time since my last un-meditative visit to the resort – where I was assaulted for revealing the truth about negligence at the resort – and I assume that deep meditation in the still-standing auditorium has channelled wisdom and compassion into the supposedly spiritual management group.

Also, although I am not a civil engineer, I am a qualified engineer with practical civil experience.