Mumbai residents have got another reason to compare their city to Manhattan. The Government of Maharashtra says it plans to build a statue off the coast of Mumbai to rival New York’s Statue of Liberty.
The statue will be of the Maratha warrior king Shivaji, a hero in Maharashtra and the rest of India for his defiance of Mughal and British forces. There are already several statues of Shivaji riding a horse with a sword in his hand at important locations in Mumbai - India’s financial and film capital.
It seems that like the ancient Colossus of Rhodes, Christ the Redeemer in Brazil and Mother Russia monuments built as tributes to a nation’s achievements, Mumbai too may get a wonder of its own. A state-government-appointed committee selected the off-shore site near Marine Drive, which is also known as the Queen’s Necklace because of its line of street lights. The statue will be 300 feet high, built on a man-made island, which will include a library, a museum and an amphitheater.
Critics say the project is too expensive at more than $4.5m.
I quite agree. India might be growing above 8% a year, but it is still a poor country. Millions stay below the poverty line, and struggle to earn even a Dollar per day. Maharashtra itself faces more pressing problems, such as a food, water and power crisis in addition to a high suicide level among farmers.
Indian politicians are of course (in)famous for coming up with such irrational ideas. Mulayam Singh Yadav, during his reign as Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister a couple of years ago wanted to build the tallest building in the world at Noida. Mercifully, it never materialized and saved a lot of the taxpayer’s money. Indeed, such landmarks induce pride to a country, but not when the country cant even feed a major chunk of its population. The rural-urban divide is already threatening a civil-war like scenario for India, and we do not need more of it.
Moves to erect the statue have been described as a ploy to win local support ahead of elections next year. It is a no-brainier in times when politicians are dividing people to fill up vote banks.
(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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June 5th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Yet Mayawati got success in erecting her own Idol alongside Dr Ambedkar’s statue at Lucknow!
They are just Misusing the heroes of past for their fraud political purpose. Even now Farmers are committing suicide in Vidharbha. The roads and severe lines and water supply is uneven in various parts of Mumbai, yet this project has been staged, may be just another ploy of congress to try to pacify MMS stream of divide and rule between Marathis, Tamils, UPites, Biharis at Mumbai!
Sufferers will obviously be the citizens.
They even haven’t calculated that no matters how much tourism the statue may increase, it will take 100s of years for it to recover the invest money and start getting some profits with interest, plus maintenance and security will keep on raising the amount of invested money!
It is a lost case, and the real citizens which produced this money by hard work even have no say of yes or no to allow the arbitrary monopolistic socio-democratic government (constantly disturbing economy of India) to raise that statue.
Anyhow, the interference of government in economic sector of India should be culled down. Either Miniarchy or simple laissez-faire free market system/anarcho-capitalism is the need!
I wrote about it here Indian version of Statue of Liberty!
June 6th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Well Gargi its really a sham(e), the levels Indian politicians stoop to and get away with. There is a deep rot in our system and the middle and lower echelons of politics is at the root of that rot.