The Temple run by Beaureucracy

We were in Tirupati for a week. The very first day we went up to Tirumala for a darshan of Lord Venkateshwara (also known as Balaji). We were told that almost sixty thousand to a hundred thousand people visit the shrine every day. Its all well organized and you don’t feel any traffic constriction on the way – just the miles of queues that are standard in most Indian temples. But the queues move in an orderly fashion and you can feel the excellent traffic management and man management in action.

The darshan itself is brief. The rules are simple. You have to keep your cell phone switched off (I presume a security requirement). You can’t wear or carry any flowers (All flowers must be used to adorn the God). There is no distinction of caste and everone is welcome, but if you have money to give or are a VIP you can jump the queue. You don’t refer to it as a statue – it is the God himself you are having the darshan of. You see the God from a distance and move on with the queue.

Out of the thousands and thousands of people who come here every hour, there must be quite a few who have come here, like me, for the first time. I was a little disappointed that there is practically no effort visible to spread the message of Balaji. Even the story of Balaji I could decipher only in fragments. The best source of information was the Sound & Light Show at the Chandragiri Fort (with commentary in Amitabh Bachhan’s voice) close to Tirupati. Somehow, I felt that the temple, the temple authorities, and perhaps the whole local populace were in some kind of a conspiracy to keep their secrets only among the already existing devotees. Then I thought – here is a temple (and a deity) that has lasted the test of time. It has seen so many political economic and social upheavals but has gone on from strength to strength – making it the richest religious body in the world, exceeding even the Roman Catholic Church! It has certainly no need to market itself – not now and not at any time in the past. Maybe it is this reluctance to induce new devotees that has been why it has been able to survive and flourish through trials and tribulations.

The temple is run by Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (or TTD for short). An IAS Officer heads TTD. The whole management is with IAS Officers and officers from the Allied Services. I believe it is run like any other beaurucracy. I could see the tender notices, re-notifications and the like in the local newspapers every day! The TTD is rich. The temple is practically covered with a solid sheet of gold. I am told all the local banks scurry to get a slice of the pie, the fat deposits estimated in billions of Rupees. What is the TTD doing with the money it has? The local people were all praise that TTD had spent some funds for providing amenities for the devotees, improving road conditions and the like. TTD builds and maintains temples at other places also, but all this expenditure is a small portion of the inflow. On the whole, TTD is just sitting there getting richer. My taxi driver summed it up beautifully – “TTD is doing everything to increase its income. Well, that’s what a good, well-oiled beaurucracy is supposed to do – isn’t it?”

I guess he is right – you can see evidence of TTDs efforts to get more devotees to come more frequently. You can see TTD’s initiatives like package tours that include travel, hotel stay and darshan. There are also initiatives like e-hundi, an initiative that enables you to make your donation through ATMs and Internet Banking without actually coming up to Tirumala. I found the use of the word hundi a little disconcerting – in North India a hundi is a promissory note or an IOU but here it is the collection box.

I would have been more comfortable to see the TTD use a much larger portion of the funds at its disposal for removing poverty and implementing social projects that will bring give back to the society what the society has given to the temple. Or, maybe the beaureucrats at TTD think that that is the work for their colleagues in other departments of the Government.