Gold. The metal is synonymous with Indian culture. All the aunties that are shamelessly pressuring us younger folk to get married, are really doing so simply because it will provide them occasion to sport their bling. When my mom travels overseas she always calls me to have “the talk:”

“Abhi-beta, if something happens take care of your brother. You know where we keep the family gold right?”

She proceeds to tell me in laborious detail about the many locations, safety deposit boxes, etc., where the family jewels are kept. I shouldn’t even mention the map to the dig site in the forest behind our house. The Christian Science Monitor reports that India’s obsession with Au is actually weighing down the growth of the Indian economy:

In India, nearly all that glitters is, in fact, gold. With a stockpile already worth $200 billion, Indian gold purchases jumped nearly 40 percent this year, making the country the world’s leading consumer of the precious metal.

Gold may seem like a savvy investment as its value hits a 22-year high. But experts say it may actually be weighing down one of Asia’s fastest rising economies. It would be better if the money locked up in the glistening yellow metal went instead to finance new start-ups or better roads, boosting the Indian economy over the long term, economists contend.

That could provide quite a boost, given that the amount Indians have saved in gold - mostly as jewelry - is worth 30 percent of the country’s $690 billion economy. But Indians have a deep cultural soft spot for the soft metal - something that may hinder new efforts to introduce more modern investment strategies for India’s burgeoning middle class.

“It’s fair to say India’s economic growth would be higher if the money tied up in gold was invested more productively,” says Diana Farrell, director of the McKinsey Global Institute in San Francisco.

But really now, how are you going to convince those aunties that giving up the gold is better for their society? I myself am a silver man. I especially like it on my kaju-katli.

…earlier this year there was a mini gold rush in Tamil Nadu, where people affected by last year’s tsunami put up to half the aid money they had received into gold jewelry,” Ms. Leyland says. “They could wear it, keep it safe, and it was in a form where it couldn’t be frittered away.”

Worries over security aren’t restricted to poorer or displaced Indians, however. The country’s growing middle class is still skeptical of financial investments and even bank deposits, preferring physical assets like gold and property.

There is definitely going to be a generational conflict over the gold in my family. My mom made me a gold Om chain a long time ago but I never wear it. I’m always afraid I will lose it and I just never thought gold was that attractive (one of the many reasons I am a bad Indian son). I have always admired gold for its more pragmatic uses.