Saturday, April 08, 2006

The value of one rupee

At a time when we hear of 1 crore salaries, thousands of crores of budget allocations & struggle to figure out how many zeroes it has, we seem to have forgotten about the ubiquitous 1 rupee in it all so much so that yesterday the Times of India (Bangalore edition) carried a front-page obituary of 1 crore. So now even a 1 crore is losing its value and you can imagine how long ago rupee one must have lost its value. We just seem to have taken for granted or completely ignored the fact that the crore salaries & the crores of budget allocations are made up of hundreds & thousands of the Rupee 1.

The lack of importance to rupee 1 is understood. Just like a newborn child takes the importance away from the other children in the family, the same way the thousands & crores are taking over.

It would be fair to say today that nobody values the value of one rupee. Big deal ‘its just small change after all’ seems to be our attitude. It’s the rupee that we hunt for in our pockets to get rid of the beggar at our car window; it’s the rupee we comfortably hand over to the guy who pumps up the tyres of our vehicles at the petrol pump, it’s the rupee that we don’t bother to take back as change when we buy products prized Rs 99 or Rs 159. It’s the rupee that we don’t mind dropping off at temples before we take the aarti. It’s the rupee that we joyfully put into the pumpkins on festival & pooja days & watch with glee when street urchins scamper to pick it up when you drop the pumpkin with as much force, it’s the rupee that we don’t mind giving to the five year old kid at home when she pesters you for some money so that she can go buy a chocolate.

It is also disturbing when people say, “It’s OK its one rupee after all”. For example when the auto driver or parking assistant harasses you for that extra buck that is the comment that comes from some people. Is it just a rupee after all?

Every rupee put together makes a bigger amount. When an auto driver or a parking assistant asks for the extra buck, to us it is just another rupee, but imagine on an average he does it with 10 people, he has earned 10 rupees that day which translates to 300 rupees in a month & 3600 rupees in a year. So is it just another rupee after all?

The beauty is in the power of the one rupee. If banks took it as a deposit it would earn you interest & become two rupees. If you bought something with it & sold it after you’ve added some value to it you’ve made some profit. If each of the taxpayers contributes one rupee extra along with their taxes towards an account for children’s education or elimination of poverty then thousands of children would be educated and there would be no poverty and India could actually call itself a developed nation.

One rupee is a small amount but of immense value. One of my colleagues has the following message in her signature. "VALUE HAS A VALUE ONLY IF ITS VALUE IS VALUED BY YOU".

We’ll leave it there.

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