Gold found in Indus River

There has been a new discovery of gold in the Indus River valley. Not a huge story, but I will use it to make a point about numbers and ambiguity. The Indus River originates in Tibet, flows northwest through Kashmir, and eventually takes a sharp left turn before it would have reached Afghanistan in order to flow instead through Pakistan and enter the sea near Karachi.

The main current of the Indus never, then, travels within the present boundaries of the Republic of India -- it almost neatly parallels India's own northern border, to its north. That delta near Karachi, though, does include some Indian territory.

Initial reports estimated the deposit as worth 80,000 crore. How much is that? Pakistan and India both call their currency the rupee, and in both countries a group of 10 MILLION rupees is called a crore. So if I'm getting this arithmetic right 80 thousand crore is 800 billion rupees.

But ... WHOSE rupees? Here I think I have seen some sloppy journalism. The discovery occurred in Pakistan, so ... Pakistan rupees/crore? In the absence of explicit sayso, "rupees/crore" are generally taken to refer to those of India, just as the US dollar is THE dollar unless there is some contrary specification. The scale of India's economy sets it apart from any of the other nations that name their currency similarly.

But specificity would be a good thing here, especially because there is a considerable difference in the valuation in the two crore/rupee metrics.

If the Pakistan rupee/crore is meant, then the 800 billion rupees means $2.9 billion US dollars.

If the Indian rupee is meant, then the 800 billion means $9.2 billion US dollars of gold.

A considerable discovery in either case, but the higher valuation makes the discovery a significantly bigger news story than the lower. The reporting really ought to have spelled this out. Just a thought.

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