Puttaparthi: Sai Baba property boom slump

Puttaparthi: The bottom has fallen out of the former Sai Baba property boom during the last year. Property prices rose enormously since the 1970s and land prices multiplied many times over. Investing in Puttaparthi property was always a big risk due not least the many untrustworthy land owners, agents and lawyers selling apartment on the river flood plain and swindling foreigners in many ways over property deals, not excluding the Sathya Sai ashram. The alarm bells about the utter dependency of property prices etc. on the presence in Prashanthi Nilayam of Sathya Sai Baba did not ring much until around 2007 when the Sathya Sai Central Trust to sell off the airport, without any luck whatever, warning thereby that it was a ‘white elephant’ on the property market. (Only a few flights per week and then only when Sai Baba was residing in Puttaparthi). The Sathya Sai Airport was donated by the government to Sathya Sai Baba through a high-level scam by the devotee Mr. M.K. Kaw (see here) who was the Secretary of Civil Aviation and who had been a devotee since the 1960s when Sai Baba’s car stopped beside him while he was standing in a road in Arunachala Pradesh.

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