God and the slow-down

Sukumar Ranganathan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:21:00 GMT

Under News

So, do Indians start believing more during a slowdown?
The logical answer would be yes.

Then, would they start propitiating the Gods more at such times?
One would think not. After all, companies shutting stores and product lines or laying off people are unlikely to spend money when neither the return on investment nor the payback are certain.

Yet, this blogger's encounter with such giving doesn't back this line of thinking.

This blogger is a believer (he won't say what in) and is in Tirupati at this point in time fulfilling a long pending family committment. The wife's family knows someone who is someone at the temple so on Thursday this blogger was given a nice tour of the temple with special emphasis on jewellery. Turns out Pratap C Reddy of Apollo has crafted an entire bejewelled hand for the idol at the cost of a few crore. The exact amount isn't known although a senior temple functionary claims it is around Rs 4 Crore. There can be no doubt that Reddy had the hand crafted (he was here posing for photo and video ops Thursday).
This senior temple functionary also claimed that a pair of gold gates at the temple (they're very nice) were donated in September by UB's Vijay Mallya, something that couldn't be independently ascertained by this blogger.

And that the entire roof was being refurbished in gold by a Pune based businessman (he didn't know the name or didn't share it).

Clearly, this God knows no slowdown.

It would be interting to pull out data on the temple's earnings and correlate it with economic growth.

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God and the slow-down