Gold, poverty and the politics of austerity: Simplicity as advice for the hungry?

By Martin Macwan* 

India’s Prime Minister, after the assembly election results in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Assam, advised citizens—first from the soil of Telangana and later from Gujarat—to adopt a simpler lifestyle for a year or so. One of his suggestions was that those who can afford to buy gold should refrain from purchasing it for one year. Incidentally, there are no major elections due in the next nine months.

In 2025, Indians purchased gold worth ₹7.51 lakh crore, significantly higher than the ₹5.75 lakh crore worth purchased the previous year. It is reported that on Dhanteras alone in 2025, gold worth ₹60,000 crore was bought. The four largest gold-buying states in India are Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, together accounting for 40 percent of the country’s gold purchases. India ranks second in the world among countries buying 700 to 800 tonnes of gold annually.

Of India’s underground gold reserves, 44 percent lie beneath the soil of Bihar. Yet Bihar remains India’s poorest state, and according to NITI Aayog, 33.67 percent of its population falls within the government’s poverty parameters.

India perhaps ranks first in the world in donating gold. But this gold is not donated to primary schools, crumbling public hospitals, or malnutrition eradication programmes. Such grand donations are reserved exclusively for gods. In August 2025, an anonymous donor gifted 121 kilograms of gold worth ₹140 crore to the Venkateswara temple in Andhra Pradesh. In June 2023, Maharashtra’s Tulja Bhavani temple received 200 kilograms of gold and 1,280 kilograms of silver as offerings. Nearly 1,000 kilograms of gold donated to 21 temples in Tamil Nadu—including 424 kilograms from the Samayapuram temple—was melted into bars and deposited in banks by the government. In January 2024, a donor offered 101 kilograms of gold to the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The endless list of donors includes the much-discussed Vijay Mallya, who in 1998 donated 32 kilograms of gold and 1,900 kilograms of copper plates to a temple that bars menstruating women from entry. The list also includes Anant Ambani and the Reliance Foundation, who adorned a deity with a 20-kilogram crown worth ₹15 crore. Donations for education and healthcare also exist in India, largely because industrialists receive tax concessions for them. More recently, reports emerged of Kashmiris donating gold jewellery to assist Iran.

Even poor people possess some gold. Since daughters often do not receive a share in their father’s land or home, there is a custom of gifting small gold ornaments during weddings and ceremonial visits. In my childhood, I saw the custom where the bride’s father had to present five ornaments to the groom’s side. One item would be a wristwatch, another a silver anklet. Among the remaining three would be a bracelet plated with a thin layer of gold over copper rods, and a cheap nose ring.

Yet when those five items, wrapped in red paper, circulated on a tray before the caste elders, the face of the householder would glow with pride—even if the gold weighed less than two tolas. In India, the truly gold-rich are only a handful. Yet the Prime Minister’s advice was delivered before crowds brought in free buses, their stomachs filled with food packets, many of them carefully saving those packets in bags for their children—as though they were the architects of India’s economic inequality.

Another suggestion was to save vehicle fuel. For the past five months, the poor have already returned to wood-fired stoves. One may not see coal stoves burning openly in housing societies anymore, but the smoke spreading through the air can still be sensed.

This reminded me of an incident involving former Saurashtra Chief Minister Uchharangray Dhebar. The Prime Minister was to visit the state, and since he was considered “the people’s Prime Minister,” he intended to arrive by train from Delhi. Dhebar explained the inconvenience such a train journey would cause ordinary people. The Prime Minister did not accept the argument, whereupon Dhebar bluntly told him that if he wished to come, he should come only by airplane so the public would not suffer. The Prime Minister agreed.

The present Prime Minister appears to derive immense political benefit from roadshows. For a programme in Vadodara, 300 buses were allocated; for Somnath, 1,600 buses. Gujarat’s state transport department ran at a daily loss of ₹3 crore between 2022 and 2025. The operational cost of a bus is ₹16 to ₹19 per kilometre. Whether buses run or not, drivers must be paid and maintenance must continue. Including all expenses, each bus costs ₹9,000 to ₹11,000 per day. This means the bus expenditure for just two public programmes of the Prime Minister in Gujarat came to nearly ₹1.9 crore.

An air show was also organised in Somnath. Six HAWK MK 132 aircraft, known as “Suryakiran,” participated. Coloured smoke is produced by mixing dye into diesel fuel. During a 20–25 minute air show, considering fuel, pilot salaries, maintenance and repairs, each aircraft costs around 17,000 US dollars per hour to operate. In simple terms, the air show cost us ₹48,45,000. This does not include the cost of the aircraft flying from and returning to their bases, or the rehearsal sorties before the programme.

A few days ago, we witnessed a woman who earned a modest living selling snacks on the roadside with her children having her cart harshly confiscated. She threatened that if the cart was not returned, she would start selling liquor outside the police station. Nobody was disturbed by her threat. The confiscation officials even wore faint smiles. Who would explain to that woman that liquor is itself the political lifeline of India’s politicians and bureaucracy—a massive parallel economy alongside salaries and allowances? Another woman finally pleaded, “Sir, take away the cart, but at least leave the gas cylinder, otherwise my children will starve.” Watching such living scenes reminded me of the British era, when our forefathers would lie prostrate at the feet of colonial rulers. I remembered villages in the Bhal region where Dalit leaders, to protect a woman’s honour, would carry the shoes of those entering homes to assault women and return them to the culprits’ houses in humiliation. It feels as though Dr. Ambedkar, Gandhi, Lohia, Mama Phadke, Majumdar, the Phule couple, Thakkar Bapa, Sahu Maharaj, Maharaja Gaekwad, Gadge Baba and countless others who shaped India have truly faded from the nation’s memory, and that the Constitution itself has become an object of ridicule.

The Prime Minister did not even mention the nearly nine million voters who reportedly could not cast their votes. Yet none of this is entirely his fault. Politicians know what people will enjoy, what will emotionally excite them—the public discussions from political platforms about marrying Kashmiri girls after the abrogation of Article 370 were only one such example—and most importantly, how helpless the Indian public remains before falsehood.

If Gujarati poet Karsandas Manek has been forgotten, perhaps these lines should be remembered:

“I fail to understand why this happens: Flowers drown while stones float away.

Thousands wander homeless, stumbling from place to place, While sky-high palaces stand deserted.

Petty thieves are punished at the temple gate, While looters of fortunes sit glorified in grand assemblies.

The wish-giving cow cannot find a single dry straw, While lush green fields are devoured by stray cattle.

The huts of the poor struggle even for a drop of oil, While lamps of clarified butter burn upon the graves of the rich.”

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*Dalit rights leader based in Gujarat