Economics of Ayodhya - Feb, 2024

 Economics of Ayodhya

 

 Since inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, its relevance has been the talk of the town. Some of the intellectuals have also suggested that in place of Ram temple, schools and hospitals should have been made. Many people have even argued that the present government is making the temple just to divert attention, from the failure they achieved in terms of development over the years. While few also argued that for people temple is a part of development and they want the temple and the economy to go hand in hand. According to statistics neither the temple would hamper development nor would it go hand in hand with the temple. Rather development is through temple and that is what we will explore in this article. It is in psyche of Indians to spend money on religious travel, we can see this as it is almost four times the share of travel on business, and over seven and a half times the share of travel for purposes related to education, shows survey data from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). ₹ The size of religious tourism is bigger than our defence budget, the temple economy was worth about 3.02 lakh crore which is nearly 2.32% percent of GDP as on 2017. Also, unlike other industries which see seasonal shifts is activity, a temple economy is active for the whole year and to add on to this industry is recession proof, on top of it during recession it has been noted that the temple economy booms which is very evident from the data we’ve seen above. ₹ Taking Ram temple as one of an example, where more than 15000cr rupees were received for re-construction of Ram temple and Tirumala Tirupati temple received 3100cr , Vaishno devi temple received 2000cr similarly many more temples put ₹ together cumulatively received 1 lakh crore in a year. And the most intresting part is that this sum is just the donations they received. If the economic boom happening around the temple due to tourism is accounted for, it would result in a huge number. One may argue how do donations made to the temple, economically help the society. Keeping in mind that temples do pay all kind of taxes that a normal company would pay, and not only that most of the temples provide free food to everyone, they also educate and provide medical facilities to people living in it’s radius. Where for example there are totally more than 22000 schools which are associated with religious organizations and temples like Patna hanuman temple own and run cancer hospitals for the needy. Even during a tough time like Covid-19, most of the temples did not stop from feeding the needy and kept the economy thriving. ₹ Tirupati temple also funded the government of Andhra Pradesh to build expressway worth more than 650 crore, resulting in a infra-boost for the country. GDP of Lucknow even after being the capital and one of the major industrial hub of UP is at par with Prayagraj which is a comparatively smaller district than Lucknow, the only reason being Kumbh and Kavn yatra taking place there every year. Also over 13 crore people had visited Varanasi after renovation of Kashi Vishwanath temple was completed, inturn providing an over-whelming tourism boost to the state, similarly GDP of Ayodhya and regions near it are expected to sky rocket as real state prices has gone up, FMCG companies are shifting their bases and companies like Bisleri have announced their production plant near Ayodhya. Moreover India’s first seven star hotel is being built there. Keeping all of the above made statements and arguments in mind, I would like to conclude by stating that the Economics of Ayodha would see an exponential growth mainly due to the re-construction of Ram Mandir