By D.N. Singh
There is nothing wrong to erect a statue of any leader or martyr. But its purpose and timing should not consciously ignore the citizens on whose back such ambitious projects are built.
While erecting a statue, one must bear in mind the rationale that such grandiose not necessarily be used as means or tool for influencing simple minds. Nor can it be used as a method of seduction of intellect of the intellectuals.
Either surpassing the tall pride of the China’s Spring Temple Buddha or dwarfing the Statute of Liberty, it may gain some points either politically or nationally. But like in the case of Mayawati’s statue megalomania, gradual wane in the relevance of such projects virtually far removed from the very basic needs of people scares to expose the decay in political morality or rationality.
But what is interesting is that such projects of pride become more worrisome when these are spearheaded by the powerful elected leaders who emerge from the grassroots but suddenly make us to believe some agenda that may be morbid and economically too ambitious for a country with a larger mass base eroded by lack of minimum needs.
When a common man is brow-beaten by fuel price, LPG per cylinder is clawing up to touch Rs.1000 soon, a corridor in a government medical college or hospital teems with over 500 patients lying on the floors due to lack of wards and when students of three to four classes are holed up in one room, the word unity propelled through a statue build at an astronomical cost of roughly Rs.3000 crore remain a mismatch. And this is a self-evident reality.
But it is not that the people always fail to recognise the reality and will embrace any consequence. That is a wrong assumption.
