Thiruvananthapuram's Treasure Trove!

$20 billion and counting! Big money! Are you kidding me? Don’t we hear terms like Government expenditures, budgetary deficit, merger deals and valuations, where amount like these are quite common? Yes we do. But, how different is this one? Imagine yourself among the regular office-goers with usual life, without any twists and turns, married, having a big family to feed and loans galore! One fine day you wake up to find that your grandfather left some wealth valued around INR 2 crores! What would you do? It’s a windfall gain, damn it! The indecision of yours at that moment can be compared to the situation prevailing now. Sounds interesting?
Oh well, only if I could realize the power of that amount in real sense! For the moment, it seems, I am all at awe at the grandeur of the royal discovery. For the uninitiated, the treasure trove found at the Padmanabhaswamy temple in the southern city of Thiruvananthapuram in India is making the headlines and heads turn, from around the world. For the adventure freaks, it is more like a reintroduced ‘Indiana Jones’, embellished with stories of secret treasure protected by poisonous snakes in a dilapidated underground. For the historians, it is all about India’s glorious past and ‘what it was’ and ‘what it would have been’. For the religiously inclined people, it’s the God’s wealth and for the atheist it’s a chance to have another go at the temples, discussing on how those religious institutions made ‘donations’ a profitable business! For television news channel s including ‘Aaj Tak’ and ‘India TV’, it’s another lip-smacking storyline about to get snowballed in no time! But, for the economists, my dear friends, it is another distribution of wealth conundrum.
What do you do sitting on a pile of $20 billion wealth when nearly half of the country is below poverty line? You take over, distribute among the poor, make philanthropic gestures or just gobble it up citing government property. As it is known, the wealth doesn’t belong to the state Government. A sigh of relief indeed! Since governments are entwined with politics in India. Let’s ask the Royal family of Travancore! After all, they are the Guardian of the property. But hey, they claims that the wealth belongs to God! Where is God? We are a divided lot on that. Either we are agnostic or staunch believer in it. Till the time we find God, it seems that the Supreme Court is going to take the final call on it. Advices are pouring in. People are discussing about Churches amassing donations and temples accepting honorarium and how are they taking the common man for a ride! They call ‘faith’ as blind! The poor remains poor and rich get richer! Nothing changes. Most of us agree though, that the idea is to make most people benefit from the treasure, making sure corrupt politicians gain very little! Wishful thinking one might say, sounds philanthropic though!
So what do I get as a commoner? Remember the Dilbert joke? When, Government increases money supply to boost credit growth, Dilbert can’t find any inflow in his account! $20 billion is a mere number to me. Sounds good, probably I can analyze a bit more about the ways to utilize this windfall. But, that’s all. Days will pass. Four foot long golden statue studded with emeralds, 15 foot long gold necklace, ruby-encrusted crowns and other jewelleries, all of them will be folklores again! With myriad plots and storylines, I can as well write a book or direct a low-budget documentary on that. Huh! I am tired of thinking. Let me enjoy the drama for the moment. You enjoy them too!