By building a statue in the name of an era, have we Overpriced Independence?
Electoral mandate’s consequential affect has raised a question on the very democratic fabric which
Constitutional forefathers envisioned and later leaders promised to nourish- Are we overpricing
Independence?
This question, in itself, is potent enough to disturb the fragile self-esteems of “national” Indians. But if there
is any disturbance created or offense taken, isn’t it only right, temporally, situationally and otherwise, to
ask about overpricing Independence of India?

Why this question?
India has a glorious past in her proud struggle movement. The leaders then fought for a cause. That cause
was Indian Independence. The solid framework our Constitutional system expressed was, and is, strong
even today. Yet the office holders of the prime public posts are not able to live up to the ideals of those
freedom fighters and expectations of us Indians. In the name of Independence, we have started capitalizing
on images, in form of statues or otherwise, of those very nation builders. They were the forces-like Bhagat
Singh, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Nehru, Maulana Azad, Baba Saheb Ambedkar, and were the precise
reason for our independence- the much celebrated, loved and respected Independence of our nation. But
the ethos of contemporary times suggest we overshot, we overpriced the Independence to the extent that it
had started demeaning the very people who brought this independence to us- by bringing them to a ‘larger
than life’ form statues and forgetting their ideals. Not to admit that Patel would have had excruciating pain
in his heart when this was done and the local tribal who lived around the idol of Patel were ripped off the
rights due to them post-independence. After all, that is what Patel lived for, their and others’ rights. So
aren’t we overpricing independence?

What is the problem in building a statue and commemorating Patel?
Let us take the name out of the equation at the behest of this enquiry. It is not Patel’s statue which is the
problem. It is that any statue built in the name of any freedom fighter, be it Patel, Nehru, Gandhi, Ambedkar,
Maulana, Bhagat Singh or anybody else, is not right. These people lived and died for the nation. They not
only saw the plight of Indians, but also pulled us out of the same. They had ideologies for people and against
any minutest harm that might befall us. They saw the importance of resource and resource utilization. They
never wanted a penny to be spent on something futile for the nation and its people. They never built idols.
Now when such a statue is built, it is built against those ideologies and against the will of our India’s
architects.

Is statue the problem?
For this to be answered, we need to consider the whopping amount of money that went into the project. It
stood at a staggering Two Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighty Nine Crore rupees. Almost 3000 crores? A
statue built with such an amount in the name of the ideals that this statue itself broke, cannot be called
problematic, it is plain blasphemy in action.Why is ‘investing’ in the project wrong?
There are different kind of usage of money. One of them is ‘investment’. Investment is when you expect a
return of profit. This ‘investment’ is supposedly based on the ideals of Sardar Patel, for what- profit? Did
we just not price the ideals- the ideals that created India? Second, it is in contravention with those very
ideals. Third, if it is investment from, presuming, purely economic perspective, then, a pre and post
investigation on the financial viability and return on investment is the need of the hour. By extension, this
is also to be seen whether such a viability investigation was done before the launch of such humongous
project. Fourth, what change does this move intend to bring, in the light of locals being relocated and it not
creating or adding value to our social fabric, apart from a decorative one? Fifth, were there other
opportunities which ‘needed’ these 3000 crores and which could have made a real impact, in one way or
the other? Such queries and inquisitions brings us to a unit conclusion, that for whatever it may be, it was
not an investment in political ideologies, not an investment for economic advancement, not an investment
for social enhancement, it was not an investment.
To let the picture known in more elaborate way let us see the term that the government or administration
uses in context of money. That term is “utilization” of funds and in building up a statue, it, most certainly,
is not utilization. It is misuse, if not waste, of the funds.
This brings us to our next inquiry.

What is the source of such funds: CSR or Taxpayers Money?
If it is quoted to be via the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), we, most certainly, forgot the meaning
of the term CSR and presence of the most critical word in CSR, i.e. “Social”. CSR fixes the responsibility
on corporates to return to the society as the corporates takes from the society in terms of resources of
different types. Society becomes the stakeholder for the corporates. In this grand scheme, which social
group, which social segment, which society had asked for the tallest statue of the world in place of better
education and health, or better amenities, or better justice, or not relocating the locals?
If it is from tax-payers money, we would want to denounce our duty to pay the taxes as this is not, at all,
the place we want our money to be put. We want our money to be put in education, health, better facilities
for citizens, justice, helping farmers, fairness, against discrimination of any sorts, egalitarian society,
improving the living standards in, and of, the nation, an empowered and neutral media, a more democratic
government, to name just a few, but never in an idol which is disrespectful towards the man and his vision
it represents, never in one which puts the interests of many directly in jeopardy, never in one which gives
the nation and its citizen a feeling of mockery, never in one which is an indication of weakness in the
democratic system, never in one where we, as citizens of India, cannot have a say. We would love to
denounce that duty to pay the tax where our money is used for building a nation of somebody else’s dream.
We want to pay them to build the nation our Ambedkar, Patel, Nehru, Gandhi, Maulana, Bhagat and other
such craftsmen of India imagined. They are ‘our dream’ of India, their vision and ideologies still live in us
bright and sound. We want our money to be “utilized” not misused for “pet projects.”
But what if this was a genuine heartfelt effort to give the due respect which Patel never got?
The first thing to be realized is that Sardar Patel always got the utmost respect and love. It is later that
people to satiate their intellectual curiosity, or for reasons not known, started a comparison between him
and Nehru. Patel was never discontent for not being a PM. They worked in complete harmony. When Nehru
had to ask something, he would walk to Patel’s room. That was the respect and it was mutual. Thus, let us
not build up debates that were never existent.
The second thing is- if we need to ask the aforesaid question for the Prime Minister of India, we already
raised deterministic doubts on his political wisdom, social wisdom and financial wisdom. Now we need to
ask a question to ourselves- Have we given the responsibility of leading our nation merely trusting “56
inches?” Neither did Gandhi, nor did Sardar had “56 inches” chest, nor did they capitalize on their physical
appearances. And when Gandhi was quoted as an “Ardhanagna Fakir” (“half naked fakir”), that reflected
the weakness of Winston Churchill in an effort to insult Gandhi. But Gandhi never capitalized on his
physical strength. We are a nation built on non-violence, we don’t need to know the physical or
physiological strengths that our people have. We drive our strength from will, indomitable will. We drive
our strength from the vision and fore-sight of our nation builders. The nation builders were wise, but with
this question we just raised a more than reasonable and a real doubt on whether we want to place the regime
in the hands of the one with either mala-fide intentions or the one with lack of wisdom? It’s both the same
in this equation.

The fear of threats
As I write this article from the perspective of common man, that means us, I make a note that any such
threat, or my harm or killing, in Modi’s regime is a failure of his governance.

Why is it Modi’s failure?
To understand the depth and technicalities involved, let’s understand it in comparison with the strongest
power in the world today- the United States.
India and US have different political systems. US has a Presidential system, and India a Parliamentary
system. The US President is the strongest in the world by the virtue of his political strength. When a person
gets elected to be the Prime Minister of India, in a Parliamentary System, by absolute majority, that person
is technically more powerful than the President of US. Imagine the power this man draws, now imagine if
this man is not wise.
This winning was not a winning, it was a choice by popular notion based on trust presenting myriad
opportunities to the one chosen. The prerogative is his, to choose good or bad, or wise or foolish. But the
opportunity remains gone. And if a person, as strong as quoted earlier, loses it to either intent or wisdom,
we ask a question. And this time the people of India have asked a question, but they have their answers in
2019.
So, either the honourable Prime Minister’s very intent is doubted or his intelligence. There is no third way
the onus can be placed on anyone, or anything or any party.

Is the aim of this article to establish Modi’s failure?
Not at all. That is a question to ourselves that why don’t we question? The man with absolute majority in
the Parliament would agree, and the nation does too, of any and every single leader who fails, or leads, that
the electoral mandate was decisive about its verdict in 2014. That verdict brought Modi to be the best fit
for leading us. If he fails, we fail. But then our mandate and it’s consequences reflect every five years. This
time when we choose, we choose to question.

Then? What is the aim of the article?
Indian money, precisely belonging to the people of India, has been long spent on things which are not only
futile, but reflects on the lack of financial prudence of Indian leaders. At other times, the expenditure is
grossly unethical, especially in the wake of the exigent needs that we, as a nation, face.
Some of such questions do take up the issue of us never questioning the wrongs that have been made by the
representatives we trusted. If this sounds like just another question where we shrug it off by saying –“Yes!
We know it and nothing can be done about it”, then we are in for troubles never known to us, we are in for
opening up a pandora’s box and this time with our silence.
Let’s understand the same in a more in-depth manner. We ensure the accountability of the elected
representatives every five years by electing the same, or different, contestant. However, in the meanwhile,

if there is something wrong which is noticed by us, it is neither noted nor quoted. At the best, it is a murmur-
ish note that we make of it. This has, essentially, resulted in our nation bleeding. It earlier bled money,

then it bled wisdom and then values. The apt time for us taking the baton up has passed. We are already
running too late. We now need to take the things in our heads and hands as we, the people of India, are the
very fundamental unit of democracy. “Take things in our heads and hands” does not, at any cost, mean
violence or something harmful to anyone. It merely means raising a voice of concern and asking a question.
Asking a question is that thing which we have forgotten. It is that thing for which the constitutional makers
devised the texture of the Constitution of India, in the fashion it is today and it always has been.
In the era in which we live today, such visions and ideologies of the great men who wrote India a history,
have been replaced by greed and desires, and, at the best, foolishness. It has made the situations burn in
gruesome manner on the lava of frustrations and agonies, garbed by the ice-sheet of silence. This is a
volcano driven by the very fire of deceived Indians and the staunching heat of the broken faiths. If we do
not ask a question today and hold public functionaries accountable for what they really are, we shall be
fuming up the pressures that an average Indian takes. That average Indian is – us. And when this steams up
beyond threshold, there will be an explosion of chaos and insecurities. Let’s not wait for that day. Let us
ask a question.

Other concomitant concerns
There are other states heard of taking up similar projects, deals like that of Rafael do exist, and poor still
sleeps hungry, unemployed still looks for job, and a plethora more. Was it an effort to shortchange the
question of Patel banning RSS? – is not in the purview of this article.
But we shall identify what are the real concerns, and discriminate them from the made-up ones, distinguish
them from the ones forced on our perception, without our knowledge and understanding and only then we
would be able to see beyond the smog created by the pollution of political industries.
The Concern beyond Concerns: Conclusion
The issue started with the prodigality of the state in the form of a statue. Albeit no name attached to the
same, is a major concern, yet the cost incurred on the project makes one ask of ‘overpricing independence’.
Amidst the fear of threats, it’s a question not on the name Modi, but the leadership of the nation. Considering
the tremendous responsibility that we now need to bear, in the wake of the aforesaid, the voices we ought
to raise, the choices we need to make, it is miles and miles before we go to sleep. But this time when we do
keep awake, we indomitably keep awake and consciously remain non-ignorant. This time we choose to
respond and we respond with vigour by raising a question. And we start by asking- “Have we overpriced
independence?”