There seems to be no limit to the ambitions of politicians to create grandiose projects that have no benefits to people. One example comes from India where the prime minister Narendra Modi has pushed for the construction of a massive statue in the Indian Ocean, about 4 km off the coast of Mumbai.
The 192-metre statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji, a medieval Hindu ruler in the western state of Maharashtra who fought the Muslim Mughal dynasty and carved out his own kingdom, is expected to be completed by 2019.
To be built at a cost of about $530m, it will be more than twice the size of the Statue of Liberty and five times higher than Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
…This is not the first time that a large amount of taxpayer money has been set aside to build a massive statue or memorial to a popular leader in India.
In 2014, shortly after Modi became prime minister, the national budget set aside about $34m to build a massive structure to honour independence leader Vallabbhai Patel.
That project is under way in Modi’s home state of Gujarat and once complete is expected to cost about 10 times the amount set aside in the budget. The rest is expected to be filled by private and corporate donations.
The new project is facing strenuous objections from environmentalists who say that it is being built in a prime fishing area and those who say that the money could be put to much better use.
The fact that the statue commemorates a ruler who fought against Muslims is likely part of the appeal to Hindu supremacists like Modi and his followers.
That project is under way in Modi’s home state of Gujarat
Oh, look, a statue made of pork!
At first I thought that “in the Indian Ocean” meant something like this
http://www.underwatersculpture.com
too bad
…about 4 km off the coast of Mumbai.
So, barely visible from land on a clear day.
No doubt Modi has cronies planning boat tour enterprises.
But the eventual wreckage of it will make a great backdrop when Bollywood does a singing, dancing remake of Waterworld!
This petition-bait, Is building Chhatrapati Shivaji memorial “waste of money”? Probably Not, so irritated me with its comparisons to the Statue of Liberty I attempted to leave the following short comment:
However, I don’t have an appropriate comment-enabling account, so nothing is posted.
Pierce R. Butler@#3:
But the eventual wreckage of it will make a great backdrop when Bollywood does a singing, dancing remake of Waterworld
And if anyone ever does a movie based on Shelly’s poetry, they can use it as backdrop.
I know you guys all know it, but what the heck, it’s worth dropping:
Pierce,
I too wondered why it was so far from the coast.
Good thing we have such strong conservative governments around to protect the people’s tax money from wasteful spending on things like healthcare, secular education, or sanitation.
That’s not saying much. The CtR statue is not all that large, it is the mountaintop site that makes it impressive.
You know, you could just build a webpage about it with a lot less cost and more people will see it.
But…
It will be useful to some people. I expect a good number of politicians and their builder buddies to make a tidy sum.
Im not sure that Sardar Patel can be classified as “fighting against Muslims” -- He was a nationalist to be sure and harsh in his dealings but I believe think that was uniformly the case (rather than an anti-muslim bias). But my reading of history will also be colored from what I was taught -- anyone have links that say otherwise ? (google searches are mostly inline with my views). He’s credited with keeping Hyderabad in India which probably explains the appeal to Hindu fundamentalists.
IIRC from my history lessons. Shivaji was not celebrated because he fought the Muslims, but because of his victories against larger armies. One must note that the article linked to is from Al Jazeera, which will obviously put a spin on it that favours their ideology. From the Wikipedia article on Shivaji:
“Shivaji established a competent and progressive civil rule with the help of a disciplined military and well-structured administrative organizations. He innovated military tactics, pioneering non-conventional methods which leveraged strategic factors like geography, speed, and surprise and focused pinpoint attacks to defeat his larger and more powerful enemies.”
That is reason enough to celebrate a historical figure.
While it is important to remember and cherish local historical figures of importance (rather than derive our history from Western textbooks or Al Jazeera), I agree that spending $330M on a massive statue is not the way to go. That money can be spent on other things that could prove more useful in the long run.