Interesting News about Thiruvananthapuram Temple, Kerala
Over a decade ago when economist Geoffrey Sachs visited Kerala, he pointed to the state's crumbling infrastructure and its stretched finances as likely pressure points as the state built on its enviable foundation of developed country-level quality-oflife indices. Sachs, of course, wasn't privy to all the wealth that had accumulated over centuries in the secret vaults of the Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple, smack in the middle of Kerala's capital.
The mountain of gold, emerald, rubies, diamonds and other precious stones in the temple's vaults unearthed this week are an extreme contrast to the state government coffers, which are perennially in deficit, which explains why Kerala is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. While Kerala's erstwhile rulers of the Travancore royal family tucked away treasures that are now roughly estimated to be over .`1 trillion, never to touch them even during the most financially-strenuous times, successive chief ministers of the modern era make frequent pilgrimages to Delhi pleading for a few crores of rupees in flood relief money, a rice farmers' package or to tackle a drought.
The treasure trove in a temple's vaults versus an economy that struggles to find funds for the Kochi metro project, for instance, is reflective of the overall Kerala picture. Those vignettes in contrast in Kerala can be seen when you meet a bus conductor with a PhD, listen to a wayside tea shop owner holding forth on where Barack Obama went wrong in handling Iran, or see an NRI trying to maneuver his Merc on the pockmarked and narrow highways of the state. As the findings in the temple vault are reaching eyepopping proportions, Keralites' legendary skills at opinionating are also to the fore: The Nair Service Society wants the treasures to be kept at the temple itself, Justice VR Krishna Iyer says all that money makes no sense if the poors do not benefit from it, and some economists feel that gold can be the most wasteful asset if it isn't ploughed back into the economy, considering that India imports almost all of its gold.
P Mohanan Pillai, professor at the Centre for Development Studies says the accumulation of wealth in the temple coffers must be seen in the backdrop of politics and religion being entwined in the past. "Only the palace records can say whether all that was tax money or a combination of temple offerings and public money," he says.
While Travancore's rulers from Marthanda Varma's times dedicated their kingdom to the deity at the Padmanabha temple and stashed their wealth in the vaults, present day Kerala benefits from the money order economy, thanks to a few million non-resident Keralites across the world, remitting nearly.`20,000 crore each year.
That money has mostly been untouched for industry or infrastructure, allegedly because the state does not have enough bankable projects. All the wealth of the Padmanabha Swamy temple is also out of bounds for the economy. In gold's own country, life for the Malayali is likely to continue in a gilded cage, much like Harvey Comics' Richie Rich being a poor little rich kid.
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