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I have this typical middle class Indian friend, been knowing her for years, chatted with her very often due to our children in the same school and same class.

I was very curious about the Gold Confiscating or Gold Raid rumor going on in India, here is what she told me – (paraphrase) There is nothing like that at all in India, in fact the Indian government did propose a scheme for people who are having the “Dead Gold Investment” issue, in India, all the family gold are mother pass down to her daughter generation after generation, often it end it up with a lot of the gold store in their home, in old time, the ladies will wear them, but now a days these gold items basically just for storage only, beside the market value, owner wouldn’t get anything out of it, so they call it “Dead Gold Investment”.

The new scheme allow the ladies to hand over the gold jewelry, ornament etc. to the government appointed bank, the bank will base on the market value to appraise those gold, aka the gold weight. Each month, the owner can receive a sum of interest (more or less like deposit money into the bank), there is an issue, if the owner wish to redraw the gold out of the bank, he/she couldn’t get their original jewelry or ornament back, it will return to the owner as a form of gold bar at the same value, also this scheme is NOT compulsory! (I’m sure there are more detail, but we didn’t discuss it).

She consider this is an excellent scheme, even herself is one of the participant, as for the Gold raid, there is not such thing as gold raid, however, there was a kind of Raid, it was entirely targeted large wealthy family who refuse to pay profit tax, and the raid was totally legitimate, it went through the court’s legal procedure, and the raiding was with the court order.

She consider whatever rumor out there about the gold raid etc. merely a spin, nothing truth to it, she even go on to explain, before Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected, the province he used to manage was one of the wealthiest province in India, most of the middle class of Indian are very happy with the current government, specially the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Paraphase – “We haven’t have a good government like this for a long time”.

I don’t know about you, my question was answered. Do forgive my English.