Time and Money Making
Last week, I’d been to Tirupati to visit the Lord Venkateshwara temple with my family. Lots and lots of devotees had gathered due to the 1st Saturday of ‘shravaNa maasa’. I hadn’t seen such a crowd till this time in my previous visits there. The heavy rainfall added more chaos to it. But all these chaos didn’t stop us from visiting the temple. The Lord’s ‘darshan’ went well. During the visit to the temple, I noticed one thing regarding the employees at the temple premises :
There are various security checks and other ticket-related checks while entering the temple. One such check was to count the number of people specified in the ticket and return back the acknowledgement. This checking was just before entering the ‘jail’, where the devotees are made to sit for long hours before letting to enter inside the temple. There were 5 guys there, just to tear the ticket and return the acknowledgement. At first, I didn’t understand why 5 people are needed for returning the acknowledgement. As guessed, there was something more happening there.
The person who was returning the acknowledgement was taking a bribe and all the 5 were to share the amount. The reason for taking that bribe was that, those who didn’t want to sit in those boxes called ‘jail’ had to pay him Rs. 50 per head. He would let them enter the temple queue without making to sit in those boxes. That queue would directly lead to the other side of the queue, without the need to sit there for ‘n’ number of hours.
The advantage ??
It would save atleast 2 hours time. I was shocked to know that such a kind of accepting a bribe is going on inside the temple premises. The most interesting thing I found was the amount which they collected by accepting that bribe.
Lets assume that in an hour, minimum 10 such people pay bribe and enter the queue. That means,
10 x 50 = Rs. 500 per hour.
Lets assume that they ‘work’ there for 10 hours. So,
Rs. 500 x 10hrs = Rs. 5000 per day.
This amount is shared equally by those 5 people there. This means that each person gets Rs. 1000 per day leading to Rs. 30,000 per month(other than getting their salaries).
What job they do ??
Just tear the ticket and returning the acknowledgement !! This also, one person does this just for 2 hrs a day.
This was just an estimate made by considering only 10 people per hour pay the bribe. But there are thousands of devotees entering the temple every hour and I guess a minimum of 500 such people per day pay bribe, in order to save time. So it comes upto 7.5lacs per month, which means a whopping 1.5lac per person per month !!!!!!!!
Anybody ready to take up this job ??
