Gold rules God’ s own country
Gold rules God’ s own country
Dr B Govindan
“ There is in this kingdom a great quantity of pepper and ginger, and cinnamon and turbot, and of nuts of India, and that ships from the east bring gold and silver and cloth and exchange them for the products of Malabar.” – Marco Polo. Even though Kerala occupies only 3 percent of India’ s population, it gulps up 20 percent of the country’ s gold every year. The recent discovery of $ 22 billion or Rs. 90,000 crore worth of gold treasures at the 16th century Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple in Trivandrum is another proof that this craze for gold started much be fore.
Two hundred thousand people are employed in this gold industry at Kerala. In plenty or a little, gold is available in almost all household sometimes as savings, either to be given away as wedding gifts for daughters or to raise cash by gold loans. The biggest of celebrity endorsements in India are not done by cars, soft drinks, mobile phones or cosmetics, but by Kerala’ s jewellery brands. Glittering stars like Maradona, Amitabh Bachchan, Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai, Mohanlal, Illayaraja, Sania Mirza, Hema Malin and Suriya came down to this God’ s own country only to endorse jewellery brands.
However high the price of gold in Kerala,
people will keep buying it. Demand for gold is sluggish due to marriage offseason and nervousness among investors. Even the sharp drop in rupee value against the dollar is not supporting the precious metal. The majority invests in gold, and on an average every household has at least a minimum of 30 gm of gold. The lower- and middle-income groups go for gold because they can liquidate it easily in an emergency. Demand for this yellow metal may not come down very soon in Kerala because both men and women of Kerala consider it as a mascot of pride among their fellow beings.
www. metromartdaily. com July 2013 15