The contaminated laddu controversy in the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, India’s richest temple, has set off the usual political and religious slugfests. This is not surprising given the close linkages between politicians and religious institutions not only in India, but abroad too.
However, in all the brouhaha, we tend to evade the central issue—why the controversy has been blown out of proportion by politicians. Successful temples are not only sacred places for the devout; they are economic engines supported by strong underlying wealth generating impulses. This is why politicians want to control them. So, anybody who thinks the “prasadam” controversy is purely about communalising the issue can only be partially right.
The real issue, one that all politicians and academics seek to skirt around, is economic. Temples cannot survive or prosper without being well-funded, and this funding often comes from a direct commercial linkage, not just devotee donations. That’s why kings gave large tracts of land to temples, mosques or churches—so that they could sustain themselves from incomes accruing from the use or lease of land.
It’s also why the church is the largest landowner after the government in India, and why we are seeing a political row over Waqf properties. This is why Yoga Guru Ramdev runs Patanjali Ayurved, Sri Sri Ravishankar markets products under the Sri Sri Tattva brand, and even Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev sells copper vessels.
The Laddunomics
If a Tirupati temple laddu is contaminated and affects the sentiments of the crores of Hindus who visit that temple every year, it is an economic issue and not just about “aastha”. If devotees start avoiding the prasadam, it has an economic impact. In the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams’ (TTD) 2024-25 budget, about Rs 600 crore, is the income expected from the sale of consecrated prasadam. What affects TTD can impact other temples too, where devotees will wonder what goes into their prasad(am).
When academics—like Anirudh Kanisetti did in ThePrint recently—give us interesting historical trivia tracing Tirupati’s rise to imperial conflicts in southern India and the laddu tradition to an influx of North Indian devotees, one can only call it erudite evasion of the core issue of the economics that underpins temples. The Left-Liberal camp has never supported the idea of handing temples back to devotee-led trusts.
At the core of the issue is the reality that around 1,00,000 temples in southern India are essentially state-controlled, run for the benefit of vested interests, including politicians and some corrupt temple administrators. Anyone who knows basic economics knows that a well-run private institution or corporation is better governed than a state-run one.
State entities are run according to rules and regulations, while private institutions are driven either by profit, or, in the case of non-profits, by some kind of overarching social purpose. This is why the public sector Steel Authority of India is valued by the markets at around Rs 55,000 crore while Tata Steel is valued at over Rs 2,00,000 crore (as of Thursday, 26 September).
How temples can thrive
We need not see any grand political or communal conspiracy behind the alleged use of contaminated ghee in the laddus as it is entirely possible that this is the side-effect of unaccountable state control. Both corruption and a lack of managerial accountability are in-built into the public sector governance model that rules the temple.
When road maintenance contracts in cities are given to the L1 (lowest) bidder to protect bureaucrats from allegations of corruption, why wouldn’t a ghee supply contract fall victim to the same mindset? L1 thinking leads to poor-quality urban infrastructure, as the only consideration is quoted price, not quality.
That begs the question: How would the privatisation of temples—or their handover to accountable devotee trusts—make things any different? The answer lies in the possibility of better services to devotees, and this means improved management of assets, maximisation of revenues, and the building of a self-sustaining business model that will grow the temple’s power and prestige.
A well-run private temple could earn crores not just by selling better laddus, but by integrating backward into goshalas and investing in captive production units where quality can be better controlled. If TTD ghee is the guarantee of satvik purity and quality, it can earn money even from certifying other food products for devotees who believe in the institution’s probity. The temple could franchise its standards and certifications, and own a lot of intellectual property rights (IPR) in the process.
A simple analogy can be drawn from the software and technology sectors. Since the late 1990s, tech outsourcing has been all the rage, allowing Indian offshoring companies to make their fortunes. Today, big companies in the West realise they may have lost out on IPRs by outsourcing. They are instead investing in building global capability centres (GCCs) of their own in India. They now own the tech they create.
Logically, privatised temples will be much more professionally run and also develop their own economic ecosystems that will ensure accountability to devotees and generate larger social benefits. And TTD’s budget would be much larger than the Rs 5,100 crore-and-odd it currently is.
The first two lines in the Chanakya Sutra say it all: Sukhasya moolam Dharmah, dharmasya moolam arthah…(Happiness lies in following dharma, and dharma is upheld by wealth/good economics). The real message in the TTD controversy is that temples must not be run like public sector units. They must be privatised. That, rather than elaborate references to the political or communal sentiments triggered by the prasadam controversy, is the real point.
R Jagannathan is editorial director at Swarajya magazine. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
Nice to see the author here. Firstpost flourished under him, comment section was lively there. I miss those days.