When God Turns Pauper

IN Puri, Orissa's fabled beachfront town, the Lord is omnipresent. 'Welcome to the land of Jagannath'—screams a hoarding put up by a nationalised bank. On the wide boulevard leading to the Lord's temple, 'Jagannath Cool Bar' serves cold drinks to thirsty pilgrims while the nearby Jagannath Tours and Travels chalks out your itinerary. The owner of the temple's vast tracts of land is recorded in official documents as 'Lord Jagannath, c/o Sri Jagannath temple managing committee'. The seat of Orissa's premier deity, the Jagannath temple, is the wind-swept town's biggest draw—attracting some 40,000 devotees every day. "It's more than a temple, and it's more than an institution," declares Bhubaneswar-based historian Dr Karuna Sagar Behera. The imposing 12th century shrine is one of India's Chaturdhama—the four centres of pilgrimage. Ananta Varman Chorganga Deva, the 12th century ruler of the Ganga dynasty, constructed the temple after invading Orissa and made it the kingdom of God, dedicating it to Lord Jagan-nath to deter attacks from Hindu rulers. Present-day rulers have learnt the lesson that Orissa ruler laid down: local politicians kickstart their election campaigns from the holy shrine, hoping to strike the appropriate pious tone.

With real estate of nearly 40,000 acres—donated by devotees over centuries—the Jagannath temple is a big landlord and one of the country's wealthiest temples. "The Jagannath temple at Puri," reads a best-selling local guidebook, "has become a beacon to many a ship of torment (sic) souls."

Yet all is not well in the abode of the Lord. In the past there have been complaints of hamhanded management, slipups in the organisation of the Rath Yatra—the temple's biggest festival—and the tyranny of its pandas (servitors). But now its problems are vastly different; the temple is heading for its severest financial crunch ever. With government funds for its upkeep drying up and its expenses escalating daily, the temple administrators have forecast a deficit of Rs 32 lakh in the current year, the highest ever in its history. "The drying up of funds is indeed a major problem," says Sarat Chandra Mahapatra, secretary of the Puri-based Sri Jagannath Research Centre and a former administrator of the shrine.

In 1996-97, the Orissa government gave Rs 1.15 crore to the temple, down from Rs 1.25 crore in 1995-96. During both these years, there were substantial one-off grants for special festivities and acquisition of neigh-bouring land for constructing a compound wall. There is no guarantee these funds will come this year. On the other hand, the bills are beginning to pile up. The temple has 280 employees on its payroll and gives cash 'awards' to 1,400 pandas for serving the deity in turns. "The temple will have to be made an independent self-financing one," says present administrator Mahimohan Tripathy.

What with its vast real estate, raising its own resources should have been easy for the temple. Not so. Of the 40,000 acres under its control, only 6,751 acres have been definitively settled as the temple's property, the ownership of the remaining 32,000-odd acres is mired in litigation in sundry revenue courts. The temple has resorted to piecemeal selling and renting: over the past four years, it has leased out some land to stone quarries in Orissa (it earned Rs 36 lakh last year from leasing out 502 acres) and sold some plots (earning Rs 32 lakh from sale of eight acres last year). This year, the temple intends to sell off another 113 acres to raise Rs 52 lakh.

Paltry returns for such a big landlord. One reason is the lack of any mechanism to manage and collect rent from the lands, which are spread all over Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and even as far as Mauritius! "It is difficult for us to manage these lands," Tripathy admits.

And so the temple is at the mercy of its tenants—many of them tillers and orchard owners—unable to raise rent or sell. Now it plans to go back to the public with donation schemes, a few of them sponsored by some nationalised banks. Two such schemes introduced last year yielded a paltry Rs 10 lakh. Desperate officials even propose to hand over some land to builders to erect housing and shopping complexes. "The economy of the temple is land-linked. This crisis has arisen since little effort has been made to evolve a machinery to manage and oversee these lands," explains Mahapatra.

The situation has also revealed the traditionally shoddy finance management of the temple. A report by the commission of inquiry appointed by the state government in 1978 stated that the temple's declining income was "certainly not a healthy sign". The report suggested measures to raise revenue, mainly through publishing its own almanac, selling pictures of the trinity of deities—Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra—and starting a dairy farm. But they remained on paper. The hundi (the donation box) was begun as late as 1983 and yields Rs 4,000 a day. A long-distance bus service for pilgrims run by the temple was discontinued four years ago. Sources insist the temple administrators were browbeaten by powerful private transport operators into stopping the service. "It's the duty of the state government to step in and compensate for the losses of revenue from landed property. There is a serious lack of state will here," says Tripathy. In a god-fearing state of 31 crore people, the state's lack of interest in temple affairs could well mean electoral reverses for the ruling party. To avoid that, the government could start with evaluating the temple's worth: many experts are confident that the shrine's ratnabhandar (treasure trove) alone would yield several hundreds of crores, making it India's richest temple in net worth. There is also an urgent need to rein in a section of pandas who harass and extort money from innocent pilgrims. "The divinity of the temple is being destroyed by these vested interests," fumes Tathagata Satpathy, editor of Dharitri.

Till such steps are taken, the temple's slide towards financial ruin will continue. And Puri's reigning deity certainly deserves more than that.