PRAGATI: Journal of Indian Economy Volume 5, Issue 2, July-December 2018, pp. 44-58 doi: 10.17492/pragati.v5i2.14375 A Study on the Management of Waste Assets with Special Reference to the Waste Lands in the Select Temples of Tamil Nadu R. Elavarasan* and S. Vijay** ABSTRACT The management of waste assets is one of the important functions of any business organisation. The maintenance of temples has been rested with the responsible persons who have had religious and god faith. The value of assets is getting multiplied over a period of time owing to the change of value of money. As far as the land of the temple is concerned, the temples hold a huge size of land and that too irrigated lands which are suitable for cultivation. Knowingly or unknowingly these lands are leased to the local cultivators with an agreement that the tenants have to contribute a fixed quantity of yield to the temples every year. In those days the cultivators offered their contribution to the temples without fail. When days are gone by, the cultivators miserably failed to contribute their offerings to the temples. As a result the temples are unable to meet out their day to day needs for maintenance and worship. Keywords: Waste assets, Temple land, unused land, Land management. 1.0 Introduction The management of waste assets is one of the important functions of any business organisation. The application of the subject waste management of assets in temple is almost not found anywhere till today. The temples reveal the inheritance of culture and religion since time immemorial. The temples have been constructed by the kings and emperors who ruled then and there with the high ideals of maintaining the art and architecture, the existence of religious practices, the prevalence of culture and the living habits and styles of people. The temples are considered as the school for the development __________________________ *Corresponding Author; Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, Vels Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced Studies – VISTAS (Deemed University), Chennai, India (E-mail: [email protected]) **Associate Professor, Department of BBA, Vels Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced Studies – VISTAS (Deemed University), Chennai, India (E-mail: [email protected]) A Study on the Management of Waste Assets 45 of arts, music and dance. In order to preserve the temples and maintain its rich cultural heritage, arts and architecture, the temples have been constructed with quality stones that cannot be spoiled irrespective of the weather conditions for thousands of years. The technique ‘Just-in-time’ analysis is employed by the business concerns to overcome the problems of the management of waste assets. The waste assets include the non-utilization of the existing capacity of buildings, materials, machines, equipment and last but not least the human resources. Keeping idle of more men and materials than required for the production is also considered as the waste assets. The application of the subject waste management of assets in temple is almost not found anywhere till today. The temples reveal the inheritance of culture and religion since time immemorial. The temples have been constructed by the kings and emperors who ruled then and there with the high ideals of maintaining the art and architecture, the existence of religious practices, the prevalence of culture and the living habits and styles of people. The temples are considered as the school for the development of arts, music and dance. In order to preserve the temples and maintain its rich cultural heritage, arts and architecture, the temples have been constructed with quality stones that cannot be spoiled irrespective of the weather conditions for thousands of years. The maintenance of temples has been rested with the responsible persons who have had religious and god faith. In those days the temple management was found very perfect and the assets of the temples have been properly utilized. The kings and rulers spared thousands of acres of land and registered the lands in the name of the chief deity of the temple for its maintenance and daily worship. The lands were cultivated by the agriculturists and they have been ordered to contribute the fixed quantity of agricultural production for the temples soon after the harvest. As far as the State Tamil Nadu is concerned the temple management is vested with the department by name the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Department (H.R. & C. E Dept). The Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Department (H.R. & C. E Dept) was established in the year 1959, and the enactment of rules and regulation was introduced in the year 1959. 2.0 Review of Literature Ahlawat and Kalurkar, (2014) undertook a study with the aim to produce a concrete by substituting granite with coconut shell. They made forty five cubes and their compressive strength and workability were assessed on 7, 14, and 28 days. The compressive strength of concrete was reported to be reduced as the percentage replacement increased. Concrete produced by 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, 10% replacement attained 28 days 46 PRAGATI: Journal of Indian Economy, Volume 5, Issue 2, Jul-Dec 2018 compressive strength of 19.71, 19.53, 19.08, 18.91 respectively. Thus it was reported that coconut shell concrete can be used in reinforced concrete construction and its utilization is cost effective and eco-friendly also. Jadhav et al. (2013) have reported developed a microbial consortium for the effective degradation of flower waste generated from temples. They collected soil samples from the areas near and around the temples and isolated bacterial cultures from them. Flower waste collected was dried and mixed with agar medium and streaking was performed with selected soil samples for isolation. It was observed that microbial consortium enhanced the digestion of the waste and the bio-manure consortium was found to have good quality without posing any harm it the environment. In Thoothukudi, lot of dry flower industries are functioned, which process flowers and export them to many countries. The waste produced from these industries contain large amount of organic waste, which mainly consists of flower waste. Silvuai and Aneeshia, (2014) worked on the making of valuable compost of this waste. They are used fungal cultures viz. Ganoderma incidum, Pleurotus sapidus and pleurot flabellatus, Pleurotus species was found to be very effective for decomposition of waste and producing cost effective compost. Kumar and Swapnavahini, (2012) has reported a study which intended to produce biogas and analyse nutrient reduction potential of rose residue by anaerobic digestion in a batch reactor. Khan and Rehman, (2005) worked on the extraction and analysis of essential oil of Rosa species, they evaluated various parameters like oil yield, colour and other physical and chemical properties of two different species of rose that are Rosa demascena and Rosa centifolia. They concluded from their study that there was quantitative and qualitative difference in chemical composition, aroma constituents of essential oil of two species. Makhanial and Upadhyay, (2015) did a study with the aim to explore the physic- chemical parameters throughout the compositing of floral waste collected from various temples of Surat city. Parameters like temperature, Ph, electrical conductivity, moisture content and volatile solid samples were analyses. They measured maximum temperature at 4th day of heap composting and also proved that composting is effective ‘zero – waste’ method for treating of organic waste like flowers. Nagarajan et al., (2014) the collected coconut shells were burnt in open air for three hours and the acquired product was incinerated in muffle furnace at 800 o C for 6 hours to produce coconut shell ash. They concluded from their studies that the ash thus obtained can be used as partial replacement of cement. Vermicomposing of temple waste (Nirmalaya) obtained from Ganesh temple, Sangli, Maharashtra was done by Gaurav and Pathade (2011). They used effluent produced from biogas digester and mixed it with A Study on the Management of Waste Assets 47 temple waste and cattle dung which was then allowed to decompose for a period of 30 days at 30oC. The prepared vermicompost was also used for pot culture study as a fertilizer with five flowering plants. Perumal et al, (2012) a survey was conducted in and around five temples of Chennai, Tamil Nadu to evaluate the amount of flowers offered there. Around 2350 kg of flower were offered every day and the common flowers were rose, marigold, chrysanthemum and jasmine. Out of all flowers they are collected rose petals and shade dried them to extract essentials oils from them by using steam distillation process. Ranjitha et al, (2014) where they used vegetable waste (brinjal, cabbage, carrot, and ladies finger) and Flower waste (jasmine, sunset flower, roselle, African wattle, and Nile tulip flower, silk tree mimosa) to generate bio gas. Study was carried out in an IL capacity anaerobic digester in a laboratory with cow dung as inoculums. Singh and Singh, (2007) stated that in his study ‘The bulk of the flowers, leaves of different plants, coconut shells, milk and curd are piled up and then disposed of exclusively in water bodies’. Vankar et al, (2009) had also reported that enormous amount of flower waste is produced in temples of India which can be utilized in making dyes for dyeing of cotton, wool and silk on industrial scale. They used (marigold) Tagetus erecta petals which mainly consists of carotenoids-lutein and flavonoid-patuletin, these colorants have been identified, isolated and used for dyeing textiles. Parameters with 1 – 2% of metal mordent and 5% of plant extract was found to be satisfactory and showed very good result to dye cotton, wool and silk. Yerramala and Ramachandrudu, (2012) gave their opinion that the coconut shell (CS) would be very useful to construction industry and it can be usable as a properties of concrete.