Tamil Nadu has more than 50,000 temples under the management of the HR&CEB, which did away with the millennium-old tradition of hereditary trusteeships and is mired in a host of scams related to mismanagement of temple funds, non-collection of dues from temple lands, improper and fraudulent renovations and theft of assets. The sad fact is that even though many people believe that public funds should not be devoted to ‘rich’ temples, only a handful of ‘famous’ temples, not even 10 per cent of these 50,000 temples, have annual revenues over ₹10,000 or $150.
