THE MELTING POT OF INDIA

The melting pot of India is not the same as the melting pot of America. India’s has to do with the melting of India’s coins. Indian coins are being smuggled into neighboring Bangladesh by the millions where they are melted down and turned into razor blades. Officials say that it is creating a huge shortage of coins in many parts of India.

A one rupee coin can be melted down and turned into five to seven razor blades. This makes each melted rupee coin worth 35 rupees.

To deal with the coin shortage, some tea gardens in the north-eastern state of Assam have resorted to issuing cardboard coin-markers to their workers. These markers are the same size as the real coins and they have the denomination marked on them. They can be used for buying and selling within the gardens.

Even though this practice is illegal, the managers of the gardens say they have to use the markers because there are hardly any Indian coins left in circulation in the area.

The paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) has been deployed on the India-Bangladesh border to check the smuggling.

"We are aware of our coins going across the border in some quantities and we will do our best to stop it," senior BSF official SK Datta told the BBC.

The mints have even tried to help by scaling down the metal content of the coins, but that has not stopped the shortages. And the Reserve Bank of India, India’s central bank has distributed nearly six million rupees to help overcome the shortage, but they are just gobbled up by the smugglers with a tip of the hat to the bank.

Beggars who are lucky enough to garner some of the coins are quite pleased because they can sell them to shopkeepers for a bit of a profit.

I just read where copper in the U.S. is selling for a little over $3 a pound. I wonder how many pennies it takes to make a pound.

The California Curmudgeon