April 2022: One of us is talking to a group of Dalits from a Tamil village, mainly women. The discussion revolves around price increases, and the villagers debate which increases are most problematic, from fuel to onions and oil. ‘It is the price of gold that is a problem,’ exclaims one of them. ‘If the government wants to help us, it must lower the price of gold.’ The price of gold is indeed a permanent and daily concern. In the same discussion, another woman wonders how she will find the five gold sovereigns for her daughter's future wedding. To give less to in-laws would be to lose face but also, as we shall see, to lose the investment in her son's education and housing. Gold acts as a currency, used as a unit of account and a means of exchange for matrimonial transactions. It is also a store of value: its price has increased tenfold between 2000 and 2020, while the general consumer price index has increased threefold. Through pledging, gold is also a payment technology for daily transactions, now used to access cash to smooth out expenses and income and make ends meet. Long reserved for the dominant castes as a symbol of purity and prosperity, gold is now a currency accessible to many, even if its uses and meanings remain deep markers and drivers of social differentiation.

In this chapter we explore the political and moral economies of gold as money and its profound transformations in rural Tamil Nadu over the past two decades. The political economy of gold refers to the structural and material conditions that allow the unequal access and use of gold to occur and be sustained.