Diljit Dosanjh, Bryan Adams: Indians angry at concert facilities

When Amrita Kaur decided to attend Punjabi pop star Diljit Dosanjh’s concert in India this month, she was prepared to experience some discomfort.

Having attended several concerts in the past, Ms Kaur was sort of looking forward to the “exhilarating chaos” that comes with large crowds at big events in India.

But what awaited her was far worse than she had imagined.

Crowd control was minimal and sanitation non-existent. Overloaded mobile networks stopped working, sparking fears about personal safety. Even using the toilet felt like a gamble, she said, as it meant having to spend the rest of the performance queued up in front of “unhygienic, smelly cubicles”.

The venue, a massive piece of government-owned land in the northern city of Chandigarh, had no public transport connections or parking space, leaving Ms Kaur with no option but to drive her car to a friend’s nearby – and then get stuck in the inevitable, hours-long traffic jam once the concert had ended.

“You pay so much for a ticket and what do you get in return? A possible urinary infection and a bad headache with some bouts of music,” she says about her experience.

This year has been big for India’s burgeoning concert industry, with major tours by Dua Lipa, Dosanjh and Maroon 5 packing stadiums and grounds already thrilling audiences. Other international acts like Green Day, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran are set to perform in the coming months.

In fact, India’s music concerts generated about 8bn rupees ($94.1m; £75.3m) in revenue last year – a figure that is set to increase by 25% by the end of 2025.

Young, well-to-do Indians are not just willing to pay more to see their favourite music stars, but are actively seeking out these events. In 2023, more than 400,000 people in India said they travelled to other Indian cities, external to attend live events.

But despite the enthusiasm, many concertgoers say their experience has been far from ideal. The issue made headlines earlier this week, when a diabetic patient with incontinence issues said he ended up soiling himself at a Bryan Adams concert due to unavailability of washrooms at the venue.

On the same day, Dosanjh, who has been on a nationwide tour, shocked his fans by announcing that he wouldn’t perform in India again until the infrastructure at concert venues got better. The singer later clarified he was referring to only one of the venues.