In the first case, is there a case for seeking to invest the proceeds, current and accumulated, of devotee offerings to a temple or any place of worship, to maximise returns? Why not simply keep them safe and secure, without worrying about the returns they generate?
There is one generic answer that applies to all places of worship and a specific one that applies to Tirupati.
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Clearly, it would be wrong to use a temple’s funds in a way that would offend the presumed will of the deity. Now, it is safe to assume that popular welfare is in accordance with the divine will. Utilising a temple’s resources in a manner that would improve collective welfare, while also maximizing the returns on the temple’s assets must be seen to be in accordance with the divine will.
In Tirupati Balaji’s case, there is a specific reason to maximise the returns on the temple’s funds. It is believed that Lord Srinivasa, the deity known also as Venkateswara or Venkatachalapathy, borrowed a large amount from Kubera, the God of wealth, to pay the exorbitant bride price demanded by the princess whom he wooed, Padmavati. He promised to return the amount with interest. He needs all the funds he can get. This belief motivates the temple’s generous offerings of cash, gold and other valuables.
This means the current practice of deploying the money in bank deposits is suboptimal. The temple’s assets should be managed professionally, with an ethical dimension to the mandate.
Temple trusts are presumably manned by pious people committed to the welfare of the temple and its devotees. But that might not be sufficient to make them good asset managers. It might be preferable to appoint professional asset managers.
If the trustee were to select the fund managers themselves, the decision is likely to be dragged into controversy, given the nature of politics in the country. It would be prudent to outsource the selection of asset managers to a credible third party. A sensible choice would be for the temple trust to ask the asset managers of the National Pension System to take over the temple’s investible resources, deploy them in diversified sectors of the economy in diverse classes of assets, to generate a decent, pooled rate of return.
Prudence would require a proportion of the funds to be deployed in government securities. The asset managers should be free to deploy them in central government securities and in state government securities, with the home state of the temple getting an added weight in the allocation of funds across states.
Very large pension funds diversify their asset classes in ways that the Indian NPS has not yet dared to. Given the need to drive innovation and entrepreneurship among India’s young, it would not be out of place for the asset managers of the temple’s funds to consider investing a proportion of the funds in one or more venture funds.
India is a growing economy, one that undergoes structural diversification away from agriculture towards industry and services. The growth of industry and services fosters urbanization. India’s urban population would probably double over the next few decades. India does not have the urban space to accommodate the tens of crores of migrants from village to town that would result. Building new towns would be both a necessity and a growth opportunity. While the government takes care of zoning and urban planning, real estate investment trusts are likely to emerge as major builders and financiers of commercial and residential property. It would be sensible for the asset managers of temple funds to allocate some funds to exchange-traded funds that specialize in real estate holdings.
Similarly, funds focused on healthcare, education and research and development could catalyse major advances in these sectors while also boosting returns across asset classes. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which deploys the royalties from Norway’s North Sea oil, takes the expansive view that the externalities of investing in some sectors with returns that do not quite dazzle might well boost the returns in other sectors, cumulatively boosting the fund’s returns across sectors. If Tirupati’s example is followed by other independent temple trusts, the resulting corpus would be large enough for diversified investment that internalizes the positive externalities of some deployments which have modest returns and large positive externalities.
Hopefully, the knowledge that they are handling the funds of a god who keeps a keen eye on his worldly possessions, because he has to pay off a debt, would stay any tendency on the part of pension fund managers to stray from the straight and narrow. If they do their job well, that should secure both human and divine satisfaction.
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