You would think the job of a government is to run a country but you are mistaken. Have you ever played that one game in childhood where someone would yell “statue!” and everyone else around would freeze immediately? Yeah, that game is literally our country right now. From Shivaji to Sardar Patel, someone yells “let’s build a statue” and everything halts to a stop.
Today, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Sardar Patel Statue of Unity at Gujrat, a statue that is reportedly the world’s highest, standing tall at 600 feet, in the Narmada district of Gujarat. Completed over a span of 33 months, the statue is no doubt an engineering wonder. While some of us are still struggling to evolve from drawing stick figures for humans, some folks out there really got a giant chunk of metal to look like an actual historical person. Impressive would be an understatement. But the question is, was it worth it? They spent 3000 crores on a statue in a country where people still pee on the roads because there aren’t enough public restrooms or hell, there aren’t even enough concrete roads to pee on, so people pee in the fields- let that sink in first!
Paying tribute to heroes is fine but building he world’s tallest statue to show your respect is a weird flex- you can’t even deny that. It is being expected to draw in a lot of tourists but did Gujarat really need a 600 feet statue to do it when a 6ft man (Senior Mr. Bachchan of course!) is doing more than enough hollering “kuch din toh guzariye Gujarat mein” during every commercial break on TVs and radios?
Image Credit: Twitter
Even to the layman’s eyes, the irony of this so-called #StatueOfUnity is impossible to miss. Remember how Regina George stood still in the hallway of her school amidst utter chaos, everyone else around her throwing hands and legs at each other? Replace Regina with this lifeless statue and her high school with this country clawing at each other in the name of Rammandir, Sabarimala or some other issue every other day, and you have Mean Girls part 2 except it’s mostly “mean boys”.
This is a project that we had thought about during the time I was the Chief Minister of Gujarat: PM @narendramodi #StatueOfUnity pic.twitter.com/INHDtBWkiK
— PMO India (@PMOIndia) October 31, 2018
Looks like the Government has decided to make this one word the ultimate solution to every crisis in this country. Statue. Build a statue. See the statue. Be the statue. When the public is yelling for other developments in the country, the government is replying, while handing us statues “Infrastructure samajh ke kha ja!” It is a good thing that the Statue Of Unity is standing so tall – taller than the Buddha statues in China and the world famous Statue of Liberty.
Finally, Sardar Patel can look over the whole country from high atop- people lynching each other, defaulters flying away with public’s money, farmers killing themselves, all the while government stands like a (you guessed it right) statue!
