Not really.
In fact admission in Indian schools is rather tedious. In addition to filling forms, providing all kinds documents and paying high fees, the students must also rank high in tough standardized exams that are said to be unfair.
The conventional path is so hard to follow that corruption carved a pioneering express highway. Most top private schools have what they call "management seats" or "management quotas". The reason to be of these seats is unclear, they seem to be reserved to students whose rank is not high enough. Are they meant to be given to lower caste students? It doesn't matter because wealthy parents can "donate" to buy a management seat for their child. Their mandatory contribution is politely nicknamed as "donation" when it is actual corruption. The Anti Donation Campaign is aiming at exposing the schools that operate in that illegal way :
"Admission through donation implies to corruption and thus, stands forth as a national problem. It is not only contaminating healthy competition among students but also installing a wrong mindset. In this way, donation based admissions not only lead to corrupt society but also reflect biased attitude towards merit-listed aspirants. The worse, this system leaves deserving students bereaved of what they deserve and to a certain point affect their carrier"
What about our favorite "Thugging Saint"? Do her institutions comply to the donation policy like all other corrupted schools? According to the questions and comments posted online, the answer seems to be : yes. Her schools ask for illegal donation.
For instance Amrita Vidyalayam in chennai : "Fee 20k donation and 5 k term fee (3 terms)"
Same story for Engineering school in Coimbatore : "ece-6 lakhs cse-5 lakhs eee-4 lakhs"
The mother of a student in Chennai complains because :
"the school named AMRITA VIDYALAYA located in "Amman nagar, Nessapakkam, Chennai, Tamil Nadu" has been exploiting people by asking high fees and more and more donations which for the past 4 years had not had any improvement except ofcorse the change in the alignment of flowerpots and the principal office"A father calls the police to the rescue to complain about Amrita Vidyalayam in Juinagar :
"I denied coughing up donation so the authorities said that I'll not get admission and since there was no other way out, I paid Rs15,000"We almost feel like qualifying the latter case as "blackmail". Indeed capitation fees can be a surprise for the students, who have to sometimes pay unexpected fees if they don't want to ruin their school curriculum.
Unsurprisingly, the faithful apologetic fans of the "Thugging Saint" hail the donation system for it's part of Her Divine Plan to save the world from inequity :
"Why is she money craving ? ... To get a management seat for a student in any of her academic colleges require good amount of money. And most of her devotees work in her institution for a low income or for free ... it talks about taking wealth from the mighty to help the meek as a means to reduce poverty"Help the "meek"? What kind of help can the "meek" expect when education is so expensive that it stands far far away, far out of reach, too far to at least populate the wildest dreams? Isn't "education for all" the best way to reduce the wealth gap between the "mighty" and the "meek"?
So sayeth Amritasatyamayi : "Brothers and sisters, let's pray together for the Goddess of Corruption who cometh to save us. May we all fly on the Golden Wings of her Divne Greed that lead us onwards to the Profit Land. Jai Ma!"