Sacred Upgrade

A COUPLE OF MONTHS ago, the Tirupati temple came out with what was an unusual pilot proj­ect. It is a place where 60,000 to 80,000 devotees gather daily, and managing the crowd has been a challenge with every passing year. Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, the trust that man­ages the temple, decided to co-opt Artificial Intelligence (AI) and facial recognition, which will help in a number of ways. For instance, when a face is captured along with giving tokens that allot time slots, it can be matched during entry to prevent impersonation and duplicate book­ings. Cameras enabled by AI across the complex can estimate queue timings and streamline them. The initiative, pegged as a Digi Yatra for pilgrims, is an illustration of how Indian temples are bringing in new tools for their operations.

Temples are not usually associated with efficient man­agement but in recent times this has begun to change. It is a necessary evolution given the sheer scale of how much they matter in India. Many are not just structures but have entire towns that revolve around them. When Giresh Kulkarni founded Temple Connect, the objective was to bridge the gap between the tradi­tions that govern temples and modern administration. He won­dered why it was not already hap­pening. “Everyone knows there should be good water facili­ties, urinals, logistics and other aspects to make the experience of devotees better. But if they have not been upgraded, why not? We started looking. The largest reference point was funds because India has about 32 lakh temples of which only 10,000 to 12,000 temples are actually making money. Smaller ones, like the one in the street next to your house, are all surviving hand-to-mouth with whatever donations come.”

Kulkarni found that if there is more awareness about a temple, footfalls go up as well as donations. He gives the example of Bageshwar Dham in Madhya Pradesh, which has been in existence for a long time, but got traction in the last five years because of the use of social media. “There are other temples out there which do not have such leaders. Ev­ery temple needs awareness and systematisation because eventually it benefits the devotee who goes there,” he says.

As Kulkarni set about researching temples—he has personally visited over 4,500 of them and Temple Connect has a data repository for over 11,000—a few issues stood out. Most temples are run by trustees who have a limited tenure of a few years, leading to an absence of institutional memory. Their experience is not passed on. “If you have been a trustee for the past five years and put in systems, you’ve learnt something. Someone may have greater knowledge about handling festivals and crowd management during those five years. Someone will do something unique in healthcare. How do you document it for use by others? One of the greatest needs is for a continuation of the resource, so that the experience can be put to better use,” he says. Temple Connect is now creating an impact document that will have standardisation protocols. “We will be publishing it soon. It will contain the necessary aspects every temple should work towards, so that their economy, revenues and infrastructure improve,” he says.

A major change happening in temple management is the use of technology and one of the early movers of this service was Sharad Kamath, founder of 3ioNetra, which provides digital solutions to places of worship. Kamath was himself a beneficiary of temple outreach. His college education had been sponsored by a temple trust in north Mumbai. When he got his engineering degree, he wanted to give back and offered to volunteer there. He soon realised they still relied on outdated ways of working, from receiving donations to updating books of accounts. “If you gave a donation, they had to upload your name, PAN number, other details onto a government portal which would then issue a certificate for the devotee. The trust then had to give that certificate back to the devotee. They were handling everything manually. They asked me to develop a software or solution,” Kamath says. This was around 2016-17 and Kamath turned much of the process digital. The donor only had to give his mobile number and his details would be fetched automatically. Multiple modes of payment were introduced. “We integrated point of sale [POS] payment machines, like how you have in DMart or Big Bazaar [now Smart Bazaar],” he says.

There were only a few players offering such services when he started out but now it is a huge field. He broadly lists the number of ways in which technology is being used in the sector. First is booking of services. Earlier, a devotee had to be physically present but now with websites and apps, temples get constant and recurring donations. Second is in having a communication platform. “This takes the form of sending messages about upcoming events, daily panchangs [astrological calendars] or what­ever information the temple wants to share. It has made people become more attached to the temple on a recurring basis. Through that, temples see donations and bookings increase organically,” he says.

A third is in the compliance part. Donations to temples can have tax exemptions, for which certificates have to be provided. “If a temple gets one lakh individual donations, it will get one lakh certificates from the government website. So how does it share them back to the devotee is a big problem. We solved it through our automation,” Kamath says. Finally, there is crowd management which is a primary issue for many big temples. For that, AI-based cameras, CCTVs, etc are being used now. Kamath gives interesting examples of technology use peculiar to temples, like a replacement for the chappal stand. “We are now coming up with automatic lockers. You make the payment and the locker will open to deposit your footwear. Then there are smart vending machines for laddus,” he says.

Last year, India’s first-ever postgraduate diploma in temple management was launched by the University of Mumbai. In January this year, Pune University announced something simi­lar. Both were done in collaboration with Temple Connect and sought to address the issue of finding administrators versed in modern processes. “We are speaking to 42 universities for launching courses on temple management,” says Kulkarni. He adds that not only is there demand for these students once they complete the courses, but temples and even gurdwaras are enrolling their own people. “I am not saying that the course is already perfect. There is evolution, there is learning, there is im­provisation. So, the first three to four years, we will put together all the knowledge to get there,” he says.

Another initiative they do is to have a mega convention where temples across the country participate and deliberate on issues. In 2023, it was held in Varanasi and inaugurated by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat. As many as 789 temples had sent delegates. This year it happened again in Tirupati and the number had gone up to 1,581 from 17 countries. He believes it has led to temple managements be­ing more connected to each other. For in­stance, there are 12 Jyotirlinga temples in India that didn’t interact much with each other. “This started happening after the convention. They connected, they spent time together,” he says. Temple Connect is now working on making a best practice manual of temples like Ayodhya, Tirupati, Rameshwaram, etc. “Case studies of these temples being put together and present­ed to other temples are very important. There’s a lot of learning in them. They can apply that formula to their own temples,” he says.

Kamath sees more temples adopting technology and the trend gaining pace. It is optimising the resources of the temples, like, say, making use of dead inventory, rooms and halls that are not utilised. These could be let out when vacant to serve as alternatives to hotels for tourists looking for a place to stay. One of his initiatives is to make temples part of an e-commerce eco­system. Take prasad, the offering that is received by devotees. Those who cannot visit the temple and want the prasad at home, can just order and get delivery. Even items sold in and around the temple are being brought into the e-commerce ambit. “We are getting them online. Our focus is for the temple to get additional revenues from all its sources,” he says.

Kamath has sometimes found it a challenge to convince the older generation who manage temples to adopt technology but, on the other hand, he also observes the age profile of temple trust­ees coming down. He compares the opportunities that technol­ogy presents to temples to an ocean. “Wherever you want to take a dip, there will be water,” he says.

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