Sabarimala is not merely a temple tucked into the folds of the Western Ghats. For two months every year, it becomes one of the world’s largest pilgrimage centres, a mountain metropolis built on faith. Millions of people, especially men, undertake a gruelling journey to climb the 18 sacred steps and reach the sanctum sanctorum. This involves navigating forest paths, fragile footbridges, temporary shelters, and a public infrastructure that strains visibly under pressure.
The pilgrimage is an economic lifeline as well — in the 2024–25 Mandala–Makaravilakku season alone, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) generated more than Rs 440 crore in direct revenue.
Yet behind the spectacle of devotion lies a story of dysfunction, neglect, and scandal. The shrine’s administrators are grappling with an unfolding corruption case, mounting crowd-management failures, and the unmistakable sense that Sabarimala is being run by structures that no longer match its scale or significance.
A shrine shaken by scandal
The gold plating controversy involving the Dwarapalaka idols did not erupt quietly. It broke out in public with a series of revelations that could make a crime thriller. The Kerala High Court constituted a Special Investigation Team after allegations surfaced that gold-plated copper sheets of the gatekeeper idols had been removed and some amount of gold from it was stolen and diverted. What followed was unprecedented: raids, seizures, and the arrest of a former TDB president.
Investigators have uncovered serious irregularities in the gold-plating of the Dwarapalaka idols: the gold cladding sent for repair came back substantially lighter than before, suggesting substitution or misrepresentation. As part of the ongoing SIT probe, several individuals — former TDB leaders, contractors, and intermediaries — have been arrested. Meanwhile, SIT sleuths also recovered part of the allegedly missing gold from a jewellery dealer in Ballari, Karnataka. In response to evasive replies and flawed documentation from the TDB, the Kerala High Court ordered the seizure of all records related to the idol adornments.
To devotees, the issue is more than a financial crime. The sanctum of a temple is built on trust — that offerings are protected, rituals are performed with integrity, and administrators act as stewards, not opportunists. When sacred ornaments become vulnerable to theft and replacement, the moral universe of pilgrimage collapses. No number of arrests can repair that damage unless governance itself is re-engineered.
A model of the 1960s
The hard truth is that Sabarimala is managed by an antiquated system designed for small village shrines. The TDB oversees around 1,250 temples, many of them modest. But Sabarimala is different: it attracts more than a lakh devotees on peak days, funnels them through a single mountain corridor, and relies on rural infrastructure to handle crowd flows that resemble a citywide evacuation.
During one recent Mandala–Makaravilakku season, over 22.6 lakh pilgrims trekked to Sannidhanam in just the first 29 days. For comparison, the Vaishno Devi temple, another mountain shrine with high footfall, handles around 6-10 lakh pilgrims a month. But it does so with the help of an autonomous board, specialised teams, full-time staff, year-round maintenance, and sophisticated crowd management systems. Sabarimala, by contrast, is run by a politically influenced rotating board whose members may have little experience in handling mass gatherings, biodiversity conservation, emergency medicine or digital governance.
Every year, Kerala deploys as many as 13,000 police officers to manage devotees heading to Sabarimala. Massive police presence often becomes a substitute for thoughtful planning, but officers themselves admit that they are forced to work with unpredictable footfall patterns, outdated routes, and bottlenecks that cannot be widened due to the shrine’s forested terrain.
The result is a cycle of improvisation. Temporary barricades are erected and removed. Ambulances struggle to navigate narrow footpaths. Medical personnel must attend to pilgrims collapsing from fatigue, dehydration or cardiac stress in makeshift tents. Sanitation breaks down on peak days, and poor waste mismanagement continues to threaten the Periyar Tiger Reserve’s sensitive ecology. This is not misfortune, but the foreseeable outcome of an administrative model stuck in the 1960s.
Also read: Crowd science isn’t a mystery. Kumbh stampede was preventable
Corruption as a structural hazard
The gold-plating scandal is not an isolated episode — it is a symptom. When a shrine of the scale of Sabarimala operates on opaque accounting, loose custody rules, and political discretion, corruption is not accidental; it’s but systemic.
Investigators have reported possible manipulation in tendering processes, irregular maintenance contracts, and insufficient digital tracking of valuables. Audit reports in past years highlighted discrepancies in inventory, donor funds, and temple stores. Each time, committees were set up and recommendations were quietly shelved.
This matters because corruption at a sacred site is a different order of public injury. It erodes not only the finances, but also the shrine’s legitimacy. The devotion economy runs on trust; the minute that trust fractures, the institution loses its ethical foundation. A temple can survive fire or flood, but it cannot survive prolonged cynicism.
From muscle to method
Globally, religious gatherings have evolved into highly professional operations. The Vatican manages millions through timed-entry systems and CCTV-controlled queues. The Arbaeen pilgrimage in Iraq, one of the world’s largest human gatherings, now uses satellite mapping and GIS-based routing. The Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj employs RFID tags, AI-assisted flow prediction, and drone surveillance to prevent bottlenecks.
But, Sabarimala still relies on manual counting and instinct.
This gap is dangerous. With narrow ghat sections, slippery forest terrain, and a monsoon-weakened landscape, crowd crushes are a real threat. The 2011 stampede near Pullumedu, which killed 102 pilgrims, should have been a wake-up call to do away with the ad-hoc crowd management system. But, the practice continues year after year.
The proposed 2.7-km ropeway between Pampa and Sannidhanam is a step forward, but new infrastructure must be matched by modern governance. Ropeways cannot function in a vacuum. They require strict occupancy planning across Nilakkal, Pampa, and the hilltop; a pre-registration system that regulates footfall; real-time digital dashboards that track density; and one-way pedestrian routes designed to prevent backflow.
The Kerala High Court, recognising the crisis, recently directed the TDB to constitute a dedicated panel for Sabarimala infrastructure and crowd management. This is long overdue. But committees without enforcement powers or professional staff risk becoming another layer of paperwork.
Also read: Brahmins, Mughal yogis, British propaganda–How Kumbh Mela became world’s greatest gathering
A mountain that needs a 21st-century institution
What Sabarimala needs is not seasonal firefighting, but year-round stewardship. This requires a statutory, professional authority, similar to the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board. It should have a full-time CEO, and technical divisions for infrastructure, safety, finance, forest coordination and digital governance, and annual public audits.
A dedicated Sabarimala Management Authority could finally close the structural gaps that persist despite years of ad-hoc fixes. Pilgrimage routes between Pampa, Nilakkal, and Sannidhanam still suffer from inadequate maintenance, with sanitation, lighting, and pathway infrastructure collapsing every Mandala season. Procurement and accounting remain opaque across multiple agencies, as exposed in the Dwarapalaka gold-plating scandal. Departmental coordination — among forest, police, health, transport — relies on temporary control rooms rather than an integrated command system with year-round continuity.
Advanced crowd-analytics tools are deployed only in fragments, with no unified dashboard tracking real-time density across the pilgrimage chain. Ecological protections within the fragile Periyar landscape remain siloed, even as millions of pilgrims intensify pressure on the habitat each year. And temple assets management depends on vulnerable manual documentation instead of tamper-proof digital systems. An empowered authority with a permanent mandate could enforce transparent accounting, year-round route upkeep, unified command, modern analytics, ecological stewardship, and secure asset management — capabilities the current structure simply cannot provide, especially at a time when growing security threats and intelligence warnings demand far more vigilant, coordinated protection of pilgrimage sites.
India already has governance models that work. Kedarnath, after the devastating 2013 floods, was rebuilt with strong disaster management design. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams runs one of the world’s most sophisticated darshan-scheduling systems. There is no reason Sabarimala should remain an exception.
A test of political will
The real obstacle is not technical difficulty or lack of funds, but political reluctance. Reforming Sabarimala means confronting entrenched patronage networks, curbing discretionary appointments, professionalising procurement, and allowing independent audits to examine long-standing irregularities.
It also requires acknowledging that Sabarimala is a national pilgrimage grid, attracting devotees from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and beyond. Its governance should therefore reflect national standards of safety and accountability, not the limitations of a state-run parish model.
If administrators and political actors continue to rely on ritual rhetoric, temporary fixes, and reactive policing, the shrine’s vulnerabilities will deepen. Scandals will recur. Infrastructure will falter under growing crowds. Ecological damage will accumulate. And the faith that sustains the shrine will face a slow, avoidable erosion.
The millions who climb the 18 steps each year ask for little: a safe pilgrimage, dignity at every stage, and assurance that their offerings are treated with honesty. Delivering this is not a matter of piety; it is a matter of governance. Sabarimala deserves institutions that match its sanctity, not systems that survive on sentiment.
If Kerala chooses professionalism over politics, technology over improvisation, and accountability over opacity, Sabarimala can reclaim its place as a sacred mountain governed with clarity and respect. If not, the shrine will remain holy in belief but hollow in administration — and the mountain will bear the cost of failures that are entirely preventable.
Amal Chandra is author, political analyst, and commentator. He tweets @ens_socialis. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)