Maaru - Mola - Still the length measuring standard used

151

Vasanth - 11 September, 2013 | Bangalore | law and order | Complaint | weights and measures

In Markets of Bangalore or else where in Karnataka, for measuring the length of flowers, people still use age old 'Maaru', a full length of the arm, or 'Mola', half length of arm and do lot of cheating. None uses a metre scale and measure the same.

During Festival season, especially majore festivals like Ganesha Festival, Ayudha Pooja or Varamalakshmi Vratha, flowers in the market touches sky rocket. Most of them who sell flowers are children and they measuring 'Maaru' and 'Mola' will cause lot of cheating to the consumer.

Can weights and measures department along with various city corporations take a strict action against using the 'Maaru' and 'Mola' standards and enforce feet / metre?

How can this be done ? Anyone has idea on this?

 


COMMENTS

guess works fine..

srinidhi - 12 September, 2013 - 07:03

Mola as you say is from the elbow to the tip of the stretched palm..and maaru is 5 molas..

They buy flowers by the weight and tie them to make the garland..so there is typical weight of each type of flower which goes into a maaru/mola..so there are standards used there..

The only thing is there is a chance to cheat as the thread usually stretches when pulled cos its wet..so need to be careful there..

I would suggest you to get to the city market flower section on a festival day and buy loose flowers..I am sure you will not have much qualms of paying a little extra..

what difference does it make?

psaram42 - 18 September, 2013 - 06:56

what difference does it make? You buy only after bagaining any way!!

Maaru Mola

B.S.Shankara - 21 December, 2013 - 06:44

What difference does it make? This is a typical question arising from any general person/student who does not know the great efforts made by many great scientists over hundreds of years in the field of Metrology. Human race has come a long way to standardize the 3 basic units of measurements namely length, mass and time from which most of other units of daily use have been derived. Man used to know to count only up to 3 and a certain king's foot was the standard for length. India has adopted the metric system of units in 1957 as legal system. Expressing the length and mass(weight) in any other units (including in feet, lbs, etc) is illegal. Of course it is one's choice to be legal or not.

Even today our leaders, technograts, politicians and judiciary, tailors, masons, engineers, merchants etc,  use illegal system of measurements for site dimensions. quantity of river water (TMCft, etc) and in tenders for supply of items in weight, etc. We need to move forward.

interesting observation

murali772 - 23 December, 2013 - 06:02

@ Shankara - Firstly, welcome to Praja.

And, you make an interesting point. I have often seen in the same report the use of TMCft, along with MLD. Of course, expecting reporters to know the difference between KW and KWHr, I expect, may be too much.

Well, not even the neta's seem to know - worst is, they don't even bother to learn, even the fundamentals.


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