Paper short abstract:

How can voluntary forms of giving and donating in India help development practioners involved in poverty and social inequality in India? The presentation focuses on faith-based forms of donating and social assistance in the form of philanthropy in India and its potential towards development India.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine how mainstream development thinking in India the context of poverty and inequality centered around the formal state (Corbridge & Shah 2013; Harriss-White 2003; Dréz & Sen 2013; Sen 2001) has not given significant attention to the philanthropic sector has been found to be more successful than the formal welfare state on poverty alleviation. Philanthropic activities in the form of generous, voluntary giving, and donating from the corporate sector in India and transnational Indians has increased manifold demanding western style

transparency and impact on social inequality in India. These practices of voluntary giving has far reaching

impact in development programmes than the Indian formal state (Hamdy et al 2016).

In the paper, I will be focussing on TIrumala Tirupati Devasthalam (TTD), a very famous pilgrim site in India. It recovers almost 40,000 devotees everyday who make a continuous and uninterrupted flow of donation which can account to a million dollar daily. The paper will discuss whether these religious forms of donations can be redirected towards social development and what are the structural hindrances. The district where the pilgrim site is located, Chitoor District, is considered one of the most backward regions in the country and yet the pilgrim is considered to be the Rome of East due to amount to voluntary forms of donation that make the place very wealthy which is in contrast to the poor social development in the region.