Whose statue is it anyway!

Many of you reading this blog would be aware of the statue building exercise carried out by different state governments in India. Maharashtra will spend a bounty worth Rs. 350 crores for Shivaji Maharaj statue which when completed will be taller than the Statue of Liberty. Not to forget the Uttar Pradesh government will in all spend Rs. 2600 crores (yeah that’s right, no typing mistake) for the statues of uh….Mayawati behenji. (The actual education budget of the Uttar Pradesh government is a paltry 70 crores)

Such blatant display of we-are-wealthy-and-we-will-show-it-to-the-world kind of attitude is a cardinal sin considering that it’s the tax-payers money which will foot the bill. The feeling that these tall structures, monuments will make us a proud nation by increasing maratha pride or by giving voice to the dalits is farce. The foreigners visiting our country will surely be in awe of these tall and magnificent structures but soon the truth will dawn on them when they see the beggar on the street right next to them. Such elephantine symbols are only for the politicians who score brownie points by increasing their media exposure and not for the middle class, whose money is used for building these and definitely not for poor who would have got this money otherwise.

It takes just Rs. 5000 annually to educate a child till 12th standard. Then Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra government together have deprived education to almost 4,00,000 children thanks to the equivalent amount of money spent on building these structures. These very deprived children will end-up becoming job-less adults, bar-dancers, beggars (maybe just sitting besides these statues and seen by the foreigners) and not to forget criminals. What a great vision of India 2020, isn’t it?

But fortunately we have institutions like the Supreme Court to see if this senseless expenditure doesn’t go unchecked. Some days back Supreme Court ordered to shut all activities related to the statues within 6 hours of the order.

In our country, when people start questioning our ineffectiveness we always take the garb of culture and try to stamp our cultural superiority. But who is to decide whose culture is superior. Also this so called great culture is no good when we are not even able to feed our own people and when the farmers who produce the food grains commit suicide. A country is in a very bad situation where it’s is past more glorious than the present. And thankfully due to the Supreme Court and other such bodies we are not falling into that trap.