The Hindu Business Line : A safe spend to save cash

WHERE do the country's cash-rich store their bounty? An occasional income-tax raid sometimes fetches television footage or photographs of stacks of cash stored in huge cupboards or hidden in boxes in granaries, lofts and other storage spaces.

There are many architects, especially in the cash-rich capital of the country, who admit they have to make a hollow wall or two when they design houses for their customers. However, there are those belonging to the earning categories who need less space for their cash — but they need space, nevertheless.

A visit to the local manufacturers of steel furniture in Mumbai could show just how efficiently and innovatively they cater to these cash-hoarding categories. Almost every locality in Mumbai has its local steel furniture manufacturer and many of them, it appears, produce two types of steel cupboards (referred to by many of them as `Godrej Shelves', locally accepted as a generic term).

The first type is for general household purposes and comes in a range of steel thickness— from the tinny types that one can punch through with a bare fist that could cost as little as Rs 800 to thick `gauge 20' steel with `gauge 18' doors, the shopkeepers will tell you. The costliest of them — at Rs 8,000 or so, he will tell you, will not cost even 60 per cent of a branded cupboard, of companies such as Godrej. And, while the Godrej cupboards come in a small portfolio of designs, the local manufacturer will make it to any design of one's choice. "Five shelves? Six shelves? Draws on top? Draws at the bottom, lockers in the middle, at the side, a locker-inside-a-locker? Your choice, sir... madam."

And if the customer penetrates into the deeper recesses of the shops and opens a cupboard or two at random for inspection, he could be severely discouraged. "Madam, those are not for you, those are for smugglers."

Curiosity, however, can make the shopkeeper swell with pride and show off his innovations. One such shop in the suburb of Goregaon had stacks of very solid, but fairly innocent looking cupboards. A particularly mighty one appeared to be mounted on a base of solid metal. But a rod inserted into a tiny little hole at the bottom shelf of the cupboard caused the solid front to flap open to reveal a locker.

Separating shelves are often hollow, opened by scratching or pressing at a particular point in the remote interior of the cupboards. Vertical separators too are sometimes hollow, "for documents and cash," according to the shopkeeper.

Restaurant people, shop owners, all kinds of officials buy them, says the shopkeeper. "The real cash goes into the real shelves. "Other cash" in the secret shelves.

For the straighter customer, who might fear a burglar rather than the income-tax official, the products are simply thick and solid and look like little fortified jails. There is no doubt that this is for carrying cash. "It is 18 gauge, doors, sides and all."

Any income-tax official who has a look at these will probably order special steel cutters for his inspecting officials. And of course, payment to these manufacturers is mainly in cash as well.

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