The pre-dawn stampede at the massive Hindu festival in northern India created havoc. But order was restored swiftly in the next few hours.

On Wednesday morning, ambulances cut through a swarm of millions of people who had gathered in the city of Prayagraj. They ferried dozens of people to hospitals, some who had been trampled to death.

Local officials moved to resume the rites at the Maha Kumbh Mela, relying on thousands of “A.I.-powered” video cameras. Soon, the faithful were doing what they came for: bathing at the confluence of three rivers considered sacred, one of them mythical. A helicopter showered rose petals on seers leading the holy dip.

Officials had studied stampedes at earlier iterations of the festival. But as prepared and equipped as they seemed to be, they did not release even an initial death toll for nearly 15 hours after the tragedy.

What they kept releasing was good news: regular updates on how many people had completed the bathing ritual.

The dearth of information on the victims of the stampede, analysts said, appeared to be an official effort to cover up damage at an event that holds significance to the fortunes of political leaders. It left families of those searching for loved ones in the dark, running from hospital to morgue.

And it left a cloud over the official tally that was finally released on Wednesday evening — 30 dead and 90 injured.

Among those searching for their loved ones in the vacuum of information was Shiv Shankar Singh, 55, a retired army officer He and his wife had bathed at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, and the mythical Sarasvati, soon after midnight, and then got caught in the stampede.

He searched for her all day, making his way on foot from hospital to hospital in an area where vehicular movement had been restricted for miles.

“Everybody was pushing everybody else. My wife fell down,” Mr. Singh said. “I grabbed a pole and stood on the ground. I saved myself, but I don’t know what happened to her.”

The Kumbh Mela, which happens every 12 years, is a massive undertaking by any standard. This year, because of a rare celestial alignment, it was deemed a once-in-a-century occurrence. The government in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, said it expected more than 400 million pilgrims and visitors to arrive in Prayagraj for the 45-day festival.

Yogi Adityanath, the state’s chief minister, is considered among the contenders to succeed Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Analysts said he put himself front and center as the organizer of the world’s largest gathering in an attempt to build his national profile as an administrator who could mix two things dear to India: faith and technology.

While assessing the preparations for the festival early in January, Mr. Adityanath, 52, had pointed fingers at his predecessors over the operation of past festivals, which had led to deadly stampedes. He said that he wanted arrangements that could be “a lesson to those who had made the organization of the Maha Kumbh synonymous with filth and stampede.”

“Yogi has been touted as larger-than-life, larger-than-Uttar Pradesh,” said Rasheed Kidwai, an author and political analyst. “The success of the event would have meant to announce to the world, ‘Here is a man who micromanaged a gathering of 400 million people effortlessly.’ This posturing would become important for the post-Modi era.”

The Uttar Pradesh government has a public relations budget of over $100 million for the year, and some of that goes to media outlets that provide friendly coverage.

It has also introduced a new social media policy that gives financial incentives to influencers who promote the state’s success, while promising action against the reporting of “government schemes in a wrong manner or with wrong intention,” according to news reports.

The hold of that influence was clear in the aftermath of the tragedy. Television channels headlined Mr. Adityanath’s regular phone conversations with Mr. Modi, 74, and that everything was under control. They repeated throughout the day a video statement by Mr. Adityanath, in which he made no mention of deaths but asked people to not fall for rumors.

But some saw through the public relations campaign.

“It is reminiscent of the opacity of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his government after the widespread deaths during the second Covid-19 wave in March 2021, the scale of which was evident later when horrific images of bodies floating in the Ganga emerged,” The Hindu, a national newspaper, wrote in an editorial Thursday.

Mr. Adityanath has ordered a probe into the lapse. His officials have not explained what caused the delay in providing a casualty toll. His office did not respond to requests for comment.

Vikram Singh, a former police chief of Uttar Pradesh who has overseen arrangements in past Kumbhs, said a part of the delay could be attributed to the massive logistical demand of such a huge event. Officials would have been focused on evacuating the injured and getting them proper treatment, he said.

But he, too, struggled to understand the extent of the delay, which he said only fueled a rumor mill that “was working overtime” to put the death toll anywhere from 50 to 200 in the vacuum of official information.

The other Mr. Singh, who had been separated from his wife, went to the festival’s lost and found stands to look for her. He registered a complaint with her details. He went back to the confluence of the rivers. He walked from hospital to hospital and back to the festival site.

There, in the evening, Mr. Singh finally had good news at one of the lost and found centers. His wife had fallen down in the stampede but, luckily, wasn’t hurt and had been waiting for him for hours.

“If they had communicated, then I would have found her much earlier,” he said, referring to the lost and found booths. “But I am happy now that I found my wife.”

Pragati K.B. and Suhasini Raj contributed reporting from New Delhi.

When her three children didn’t have enough to eat, Monica Atieno decided to apply for a job through a new program that was recruiting women to become motorcycle taxi drivers — a profession long dominated by men.

At first, she kept her plan a secret from her husband, who was himself a motorcycle taxi driver in their town of Ukwala in western Kenya. When he found out, he was furious and threatened to leave. But Ms. Atieno, who is 29, says she told him: “I’m going to do it, because I know what I’m going to achieve.”

Last year, after hundreds of hours of training, she became a motorcycle taxi driver — a “Boda Girl,” as they’re called. She’s now one of only about 1,000 women among the estimated 2.5 million motorcycle taxi drivers in the east African nation of Kenya, according to the Boda Boda Safety Association, an advocacy group.

The road to success has been full of obstacles. Many of the women who signed up, like Ms. Atieno, had never before driven a motorbike, let alone a car. They have faced harassment from passengers and fellow drivers. Their husbands voiced disapproval.

The women received training in essential skills like self-defense and mechanics. Now, many say they have begun to earn incomes and independence, discovered new strengths and, in some cases, started to support their entire families — accomplishments they once thought impossible.

“When I joined Boda Girls, my life changed completely,” said Lilian Rehema, 33, one of the first women motorcycle taxi drivers in her area. “My kids can dress nicely. They can get food every day.”

The program started when Dan Ogola, who had helped found the local Matibabu Hospital two decades ago, noticed that women were regularly coming to the hospital in search of work — whether as cooks, cleaners or receptionists.

The hospital was one of the largest employers in Siaya County, where one million residents live mostly in villages and small towns connected by red soil roads that wind through flat plains and rolling hills. Many people make a living by farming maize, cassava or sweet potatoes. Others fish in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake. Jobs are scarce, especially for women.

At the same time, Mr. Ogola noticed a troubling pattern: When these same women became patients, they couldn’t afford transportation to the hospital for medical checkups. Many had to walk up to two hours, even when pregnant, to reach the hospital. Some ended up giving birth en route.

So, with the support of an American charity, the Tiba Foundation, which also helps fund the hospital, he hired a driving school to train women motorcycle taxi drivers. In April 2022 he recruited 10 women from nearby villages — the first cohort of “Boda Girls.”

“We kill poverty by creating jobs for them,” he said, “and they bring people to us and make health services accessible to women.”

After Ms. Rehema’s husband died, she and her four children could no longer survive on money from growing kale on her small farm. On the verge of losing her home, she was forced to beg for money. After years of struggle, she came across Matibabu hospital’s surprising job opportunity when she went there hoping to find work as a cook.

She had never before heard of women driving boda-bodas, as the two-wheeled taxis are called.

Boda-bodas originated in the 1960s when riders along the border between Kenya and Uganda would shout “border to border” to attract customers, according to researchers. What started as bicycle taxis eventually transformed into motorcycle taxis — often cheap, imported bikes from India. Boda-bodas became one of Kenya’s major economic forces.

“I didn’t know how to ride, but I could learn,” Ms. Rehema said.

With time and persistence, she mastered the skills to navigate the region’s unpredictable dirt roads: hitting the brakes just before turns and leaning into corners while keeping steady. She learned how to change engine oil in inconvenient conditions.

Two years ago, she became one of the first female drivers in her area. Now, she rushes expectant mothers to deliver their babies in the hospital, and transports women and their babies to checkups. When she arrives at the hospital, she greets everyone with warm smiles, kisses babies and shakes hands like a beloved local politician.

The “Boda Girls” program was an instant hit, inspiring others.

Each morning, Lucy Odele marveled at the confidence of the Boda Girls zooming past her house. Ms. Odele had had polio as a child, leaving her with a limp in her right leg and making it hard for her to stand for long. It also made finding work even more difficult. Living as a single mother with her parent, Ms. Odele, 38, longed for independence. She applied to the program, and joined 13 other women in May 2023 as part of the second cohort.

But Ms. Odele said she had initially struggled, finding it hard to swing her leg over the bike. “I used to cry. I would see others make progress, while I stayed where I was,” she said.

Refusing to give up, the program found her a solution: a smaller scooter that she could more easily mount. At night, she wheels it carefully into her cramped house, positioning it next to her sofa like a trusted friend.

“I know what it’s like, walking long distances to clinics,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to suffer the way I suffered.”

The program has now trained 51 women. In the early morning light, they can be seen on their colorful bikes with bright pink seats — a mark of their trainee status. When they graduate, they are given purple leather seats, each displaying the hand-stitched Boda Girls logo.

Last summer, when Violet Onyango was in labor, her family couldn’t afford the fare to transport her to the hospital, and the baby’s father refused to help. So she called one of the Boda Girls who had already driven her to multiple checkups, who gently transported her for free to the hospital to safely deliver her baby girl.

Afterward, Ms. Onyango, an avid soccer player, said of her baby, “I want her to go to school, get an education and become a footballer like me.”

Many male boda-boda drivers believe that women are taking their jobs.

“Before the Boda Girls arrived, I was doing well, but things changed,” said Frederic Owino, a longtime boda-boda driver in the county. “Since they came, my work has decreased.”

Kevin Mubadi, chairman of the Boda Boda Safety Association of Kenya, which supports inclusion for women drivers, said, “Some passengers still find it strange for women to ride boda-bodas.”

He added that women also often experience “sexual harassment from male clients.”

To protect themselves, the Boda Girls learn self-defense. Trainers teach them to stop the bike if a passenger is inappropriate, firmly assert the rules and take a defensive stance — arms extended, palms out, ready to kick if threatened.

The Boda Girls have gone on to share these skills with girls in nearby schools.

The landscape is slowly changing, with more women joining the industry not just as drivers, but also as engineers and mechanics — changing mind-sets all around them.

Ms. Atieno’s once-skeptical husband, who had threatened to leave when she first enrolled in the program, changed his mind after a month when he saw that she was already earning double what he made. With her Boda Girl earnings, she bought a cow and several pigs, and expanded into other ventures like making soap and tailoring.

One morning in July, she carried two of their children to school on the back of her purple motorbike. Her husband hopped on too, so he could attend a parent-teacher meeting. After dropping them at school, Ms. Atieno rode on — off to work.

The Trump administration is considering sending 24,000 assault rifles to Israel that had been held up at the State Department on the orders of Antony J. Blinken, the former secretary of state, a U.S. official said.

Mr. Blinken had asked the State Department not to move forward with fulfilling Israel’s request, which comprises three tranches valued at a total of $34 million. That happened after Democratic lawmakers raised concerns that the rifles could end up in the hands of settler militias or that Israeli police officers would use them in acts of unjustified violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The State Department did not reply to a question sent by email on Friday about the possibility of moving forward with the order. The Israeli Embassy said earlier that it had addressed questions raised by the U.S. officials about the arms sales.

Israel is buying more than three-quarters of the pending rifles from Colt’s Manufacturing.

The lawmakers became aware of the arms order after the State Department gave informal notification of the sale to two congressional committees a few weeks after Hamas attacks in Israel in October 2023 ignited fierce strikes by the Israeli military in Gaza. The New York Times reported that the order prompted concern from lawmakers and some State Department officials.

At the time, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right Israeli politician, was the minister of national security. He has supported the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel. Some Democratic lawmakers were concerned that his police forces would use the American weapons to support settlers engaged in violence against Palestinians, which has become increasingly common in recent years, or to carry out acts of violence themselves.

Mr. Ben-Gvir said in October 2023 that he would give arms to settlements and create civilian militias for the protection of settlers.

When asked then about concerns about how the rifles would be used, a State Department official said the weapons would go only to “I.N.P.-controlled units,” referring to the Israeli National Police. But the official, Jessica Lewis, who runs the bureau in charge of arms transfers, did not define such units.

Mr. Ben-Gvir and his party recently left the government to protest a new series of Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swaps.

In December 2023, Democratic lawmakers informally approved the order of rifles on the condition that Israel provide proper assurances for their use, said the U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive weapons orders. Lawmakers then continued to express concerns to Mr. Blinken, who eventually ordered the rifles held.

The Biden administration rarely rejected weapons requests from Israel, a policy that led to widespread criticism from Democrats as Israel’s bombings devastated Gaza. President Trump has signaled that he will support Israel even more ardently.

On Jan. 24, the White House told the Pentagon it could send a large shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that Mr. Biden had held up last summer in an effort to dissuade Israel from dropping heavy ordnance on the Palestinian city of Rafah, which it did anyway. U.S. military officials deem 2,000-pound bombs to be too destructive to use in urban warfare.

Mike Huckabee, Mr. Trump’s pick as the next ambassador to Israel, has said that all of the West Bank belongs to Israel and that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”