Actor Aishwarya Rai (above) with her parents and (below) Varun Gandhi at the Siddhivinayak temple. File pictures

Mumbai, Jan. 4: Almost all famous temples of the country are coming together to conduct for the first time serious worldly business.

On January 28 and 29, the temple teams will come together at a new five-star hotel in the city for a seminar, held at the initiative of Mumbai’s most revered mandir, the Siddhivinayak temple, to discuss corporate governance.

With faith staging an explosive comeback ? as many as nine spiritual channels are on air in the country now ?temples feel that it is high time they go in for management tools to run their secular affairs.

To be attended by the biggest temples ? apart from Siddhivinayak, there will be 20 mandirs, including Tirupati, Vaishnodevi, Guruvayoor, Shirdi, Kedarnath, Badrinath and also Pashupatinath in Nepal ? the International Temple Summit 2006 will be inaugurated by Union tourism minister Renuka Chowdhury (temple tourism will be high on the agenda).

The seminar will draw corporate bosses, who will hold forth on areas of their expertise.

“It will be ‘non-religious’ seminar on temple management and administration,” says Sanjay Bhagwat, appropriately designated CEO of the Shree Siddhivinayak Temple Trust.

Deepak Parekh, chairman, HDFC Ltd, who confirmed his participation today, will address the seminar on financial management problems.

Ad guru Alyque Padamsee will hold forth on the importance of public relations in temple management.

Financial advice is necessary, says Bhagwat, because temples have a lot of surplus income, and they want the money to be invested judiciously.

“At the end of the summit, the participants would be in a position to understand the need and relevance of temple management and administration in today’s times. They would also be oriented towards certain tools to effectively manage the administration,” says the Powerpoint presentation on the seminar by Bhagwat.

He will also moot the idea of an integrated call centre for all the temples. “There will be one toll-free telephone number that will offer information on all temples of India,” says Bhagwat. The information on offer will cover puja schedules, location of temples, donations and all matters related to worship. A proposal for an integrated website for all temples will be discussed.

Siddhivinayak has impeccable credentials to take the lead in the corporatisation effort. As far as temples go, it is on the cutting edge of technology, symbolising the rapid strides made in the abodes of the gods in the past few years.

The Mumbai temple, which attracts almost 70,000 devotees on Tuesdays, considered auspicious, including celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, takes immense pride in its webcam service. “Ours is the only temple which webcasts the puja live,” says Bhagwat.

With two webcams installed in the sanctum sanctorum, devotees can log on to the temple website and see the puja being performed.

On the anvil are online booking ? though a devotee can already book a puja through e-mail ? and ISO certification.

“The idea is not to have a certificate, but to corporatise our financial administration,” says Bhagwat. He says that the temple is gearing up for an external audit, though there is some resistance from the traditional-minded staffers.

Security at the temple is hi-tech. Several CCTVs are already installed and a blast-proof wall is being built around the temple.

“With all the new equipment of CCTVs, metal detectors and baggage scanners, the new security measures have cost Rs 5 crore,” says Bhagwat.

The economy of temples has boomed, too, in leaps and bounds. Siddhivinayak is a case in point. The temple says its annual income for 2004-2005 is Rs 17 crore, a sharp rise from last year’s Rs 12 crore.

“I don’t know about other temples, but in 2001, when I joined, when we counted money twice a week, it used to be around Rs 2 lakh per count. Now it is about Rs 6 lakh per count, twice a week,” Bhagwat says.

It must be the other side of software, shopping malls and fat salaries ? the rising stress that has no worldly cure.