How Swadharma works

1. The three ways to book

Swadharma connects three kinds of people: devotees who need a ceremony performed, professionals who perform it, and the institutions that vouch for them. How a booking is made determines who takes your money and who answers for the ceremony — so we tell you which one you are on, before you pay.

Whichever route you use, someone is always watching the delivery. That is the operator of the institution the professional is enrolled with. It is not always the same party that took your money, and that is deliberate — see section 7.

2. For devotees

What you can expect

• To be told, before you pay, who you are contracting with, who is monitoring your booking, and what happens if the ceremony is not delivered.
• A professional who is verified for the specific category you booked. Our verification is per category — a purohita verified for Abhishekam is not thereby verified for Vivāha, and we never show it as though they were.
• To see the venue on a map, and — for a ceremony at your home — the professional's live location while they are travelling to you.
• To rate both the professional and the institution after a completed booking.
• A clear route to raise a concern, and an answer to it.

What we ask of you

• A complete and correct house address for a ceremony at home. An address that cannot be found is the commonest cause of a late or failed engagement.
• To be present and reachable at the scheduled time.
• A clean, quiet and appropriate space for the ritual.
• Ritual details — gotra, nakshatra, sankalpa — where the ceremony requires them.

3. For professionals

Joining

Enrolment is open. You register with Swadharma — not with any one temple — and then seek empanelment with the institutions you wish to serve.

1. Register and complete your profile: languages, Veda, śākhā, sampradāya, your specializations, and the area you serve. We ask for a service area, never your home address. We publish where you serve, never where you live.
2. Add your credentials — documents, and links you offer as testimony.
3. Request verification, for each category you wish to be verified in. We schedule a video call.
4. Request empanelment with an institution. Its administrator decides.
5. Keep your availability honest. The roster is drafted from it automatically, and an availability record that does not reflect reality produces engagements you cannot keep.

What is expected of you

• Accept only engagements in categories you are verified for.
• Start location sharing before you depart, and mark Departed, Arrived and Completed in the app.
• Attend on time — or give notice as early as you can. Notice is not a fault; silence is.
• Where you were introduced through an institution, remit its published minimum under its policy.
• Conduct yourself in a devotee's home as you would in the temple.
• Do not keep, publish or reuse a devotee's address, phone number or photographs beyond what the engagement requires.

What you are entitled to

When empanelment can be withdrawn

By Swadharma, or by an institution for its own empanelment: credentials found to be false; repeated non-attendance, or non-attendance without notice; long-unpaid dues to an institution; refusal to share location as a pattern rather than an incident; or conduct in a devotee's home that would not be acceptable in the temple.

4. For temples and trusts

An institution holding a Swadharma account decides who may serve its devotees, confirms its bookings, and watches delivery. Three roles carry that work.

What the institution answers for

• Its own collections, receipts and refunds where it took the payment.
• The accuracy of its published minimums, policies and pages.
• The conduct of the staff it employs.
• The monitoring duty it accepted at empanelment.

5. Money, contributions and tax

Three separate sums move on this platform, and they are easiest to hold apart by asking who ends up with each one. Only the third ever reaches Swadharma, and only if you choose to give it.

What you pay for the ceremony

It goes to the temple that took your booking, or to the professional who performs it. It does not pass through Swadharma. We do not hold it during the engagement, take a percentage of it, split it, or pay anybody out of it. There is no wallet, no escrow and no settlement cycle on this platform, because there is nothing of yours in it.

The institution's minimum

Where a professional was introduced to you through a temple or trust, that professional remits the institution's published minimum under the institution's own policy. It is an obligation between those two parties. Swadharma keeps the register and nothing more — long-unpaid dues are a ground for withdrawing empanelment, and that is the only lever we hold, precisely because we never hold the money.

A contribution to Swadharma

Swadharma makes information available: who is verified, for what, where they serve, and when they are free. A devotee who finds that worth supporting may offer a contribution — in the same spirit as what is left at the temple, and on the same footing. It is goodwill, not a price.

Where you register, and what it fixes

You register on one side — India, or the rest of the world — and you choose which when you open your account. It is the same principle as a driving licence: you obtain it where you live, from the authority you actually answer to, not wherever you happen to be standing.

That choice is made once and is not changed afterwards, because it decides which country receipts you and under which registration. A contribution never crosses a border — which keeps every devotee's giving inside a single tax system, where the receipt can actually be used when they file.

6. What Swadharma is responsible for

Swadharma is a product of Dharma Poshanam Inc. We are the platform, not the priest and not the temple. Being precise about that is what makes the rest of this page trustworthy.

We do

• Provide and operate the platform, and keep it available and secure.
• Run the verification programme, per service category, and keep its record.
• Maintain the registers — empanelment, dues, contributions, ratings and complaints.
• Publish minimum rate charts, so that fair remuneration has a floor.
• Answer for the introduction where you came to us: that a verified, suitable professional was assigned and attended.

We do not

• Hold, route or pay out a professional's fee, on any route.
• Employ professionals, direct their method, or set their hours.
• Collect tax on behalf of any person.
• Store anyone's location.
• Sell, rent or trade anybody's personal information.

7. Location sharing and delivery monitoring

When a ceremony is performed at a devotee's home, someone should know whether the professional arrived. On Swadharma that someone is the operator of the institution the professional is enrolled with.

How it works

• The professional shares their live location using Google Maps' own location-sharing feature, from their own Google account, for the duration of the engagement.
• The devotee sees that live location while the professional is travelling to them. The operator sees it too, alongside the booking.
• The professional marks Departed, Arrived and Completed. Those marks are the record of delivery.
• If a professional has not set out shortly before the scheduled time, the operator is alerted — so that a delay can be handled before it becomes a disappointment.

8. If something goes wrong

Raise it at the level closest to the problem — most delivery issues are resolved there — and escalate if you are not satisfied.

1. The institution's operator, for anything about a booking, a schedule or an arrival.
2. The institution's administrator, if the operator cannot resolve it.
3. Swadharma, at swadharma@dharmaposhanam.in, for anything about your account, the platform, a professional's conduct, or a complaint the institution has not resolved.

A professional raising a concern — about a rejection, a suspension, a delisting or a disputed rating — follows the same ladder from the institution's administrator upward, and will receive a written outcome.

We acknowledge every complaint and tell you who is handling it. Where a ceremony you paid for was not delivered, the remedy depends on who took your payment; the applicable terms are shown to you before you pay and are set out in the terms of service for the booking you made.

9. Contact

For a booking made with a particular temple or trust, that institution publishes its own contact and grievance details on its Swadharma site.