I recently visited the famous Lord Balaji Temple in Tirumala and the Goddess Padmavati Temple in Tirupati. Here are a few highlights from my trip:
Money can’t buy you darshans
Crass commercialization can be avoided even if commercialization itself can’t. Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) – the government body that manages the aforementioned two temples and many others – proves this point in more ways than one. Take, for example, the ticketing system, which ensures that money can’t buy a darshan. With an INR 50 Sudarsanam ticket booked well in advance, I got a darshan in 2 hours 45 minutes whereas pilgrims who walked in and bought the so-called “Quick Darshan” ticket costing INR 300 went through an eight hour wait on the same day.https://twitter.com/s_ketharaman/status/477799923229151232
Centralized baggage reclaim
TTD has set up a new centralized facility from where pilgrims can collect back their footwear and electronic items, both of which are banned inside the temple premise. In the past, pilgrims would get into the temple via different queue complexes after checking in their sandals and mobile phones at the collection point closest to their point of entry and then find it difficult to locate the said collection point when they exited the temple situated far away. Now, while pilgrims can continue to hand over their belongings at various collection centers conveniently, they can reclaim them back from a central facility situated on the way to the bus stand / car park, with TTD picking up stuff from the distributed collection points and transferring them to the central facility. As a result, pilgrims are now saved the trouble of having to go back to the place where they handed in their items. This is a great move by TTD. That said, the new lift-and-shift process can do with some streamlining so that the reclaiming process takes a lot less time than it currently does. It would also help if the baggage receipt clearly showed the location of the new reclaim center. The cryptic reference to the “Old Annadhanam Complex” on the sign atop each collection point isn’t enough.
No fingerprint verification
Although pilgrims are fingerprinted while purchasing darshan and seva tickets, no verification of their fingerprints happens when they actually visit the temple. This is understandable considering that fingerprint matching is a very compute- and bandwidth-intensive process that’s simply not practical when dealing with the kind of high volumes – 20-50K pilgrims per day depending upon the season – handled by the temple’s queue complexes.
That said, it’s not as though ticketholders are let in without authentication. TTD’s inspection staff verifies the identity of each ticket holder using photographs that are captured during ticket purchase. Based on my personal experience, they do an exemplary job of this: Just ahead of me, a group of four people presented their ticket to the inspector. With a scan of of the barcode printed on the ticket and a quick look at the images displayed on the computer screen, the inspector immediately spotted that one of the four people in the group was not the one on whose name the ticket was booked. Since tickets are not transferable, the inspector rightly refused admission to the errant person, while offering to let the other three members of the group to proceed. In response, the head of the group hinted that he was willing to “take care” of the inspector if the latter was willing to let all four people pass. Shame on this guy who chose a temple, of all places, to attempt a bribe. The inspector didn’t succumb to the enticement since that was the last I saw of this group.
Better crowd control
Thanks to a new railing set up inside the sanctum sanctori, the flow of pilgrims in “the last mile” was more orderly. There was a lot less of the pushing and shoving this time than I’ve seen on my previous visits.
4:1 ratio of prasadam
There’s a 4X difference in the number of laddus between Tirumala Balaji and Tirupati Padmavati temples. An INR 50 ticket is eligible for two free laddus in Tirumala whereas the INR 100 ticket will get you only one free laddu in Tirupati.
Change is the only constant
The pursuit of improving safety and convenience for an ever-growing volume of pilgrims visiting Tirumala every day might call for constant evolution in temple operations. As a result, TTD makes frequent changes in procedures in and around the temple premises. The aforementioned centralization of baggage reclaim is an example of one such change. The shift in the bus terminal’s location – it’s now opposite Ram Bagicha Guest House – is another. Changes are fine but I wish TTD communicated them to pilgrims more proactively – via signs located onsite, banners on its website, and circulars on the notice boards of its centers spread all over India. While on the subject, I also fervently hope that TTD follows a multilingual policy in its communications and gives adequate weightage to English, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and other regional languages in recognition of the fact that, while Tirumala is located in a state where Telugu is the local language, it attracts several pilgrims from many other states of India.