How faith can fund primary education in India!
India is a country where temples have golden roofs while schools in rural areas have roofs leaking! Recently I went on a small pilgrimage with family, to Hindu holy towns of Haridwar, Mathura and Vrindavan. One aspect that was strikingly visible was the greed of priests for money citing various reasons and promising welfare for our family, kids and ourselves. At a few temples we visited, they were requesting for donations in the name of God or Goddess! From the time you reach the vicinity of a temple, people selling material for worship and then temples requesting donations and priests requesting donations in exchange of blessings, or for helping you perform ‘pooja’ to please Gods, is a common sight across various popular temples in India. The amount offered at some extremely popular temples runs into hundreds of crores (10 million) annually. Daily collections in all Indian temples may be a few hundred crores! Some of the temples use this money for some welfare activities thou