Note: All the results in the following article are basic estimations and are not to be taken literally.

India has, in the last few years been obsessed with statues. 

Getmusc

Be it the Statue of Unity in Gujarat, the Chhatrapati Shivaji statue in Maharashtra or the soon to be built Cauvery statue in Karnataka and the Ram statue in Uttar Pradesh, our politicians have found hundreds of crores to spend on these supposed ‘tourist attractions’. 

Irish Times

These statues (even the ones to be built) have a combined cost of ₹8119 crore. 

Let’s think about it for a while and see what other things could be done with that amount of money.

1. Build 16,23,800 school sanitary complexes all over the country. 

Defeat DD

2. Fund Mission Mars 1,097 times. 

Pic about space

3. Increase the relief given for the North East floods 8 times

rightlog

4. Adopt 2,029 villages like Donja, which was adopted by Sachin Tendulkar. 

Newscode

5. Give the salaries of 78,82,524 contractual teachers in government schools. The government could also increase their basic pay of ₹10,300 per month. 

Indian Express

6. Raise 14,829 children from the moment they are delivered to the age of 21. 

Unsplash

7. Fill all of Mumbai’s potholes for 873 years, if the planet lives that long. 

YouTube

8. Install air purifiers in 18,04,623 homes in Delhi after Diwali every year. 

The Wire

9. Complete Delhi’s target of 1000 buses 3 times over to battle air pollution.

ebusindia

10. Increase the budget of the Ministry of Earth Sciences 4.5 times, according to the 2018 budget. 

Earth and Planetary Sciences

11. Increase the budget of the Nirbhaya fund twice over.

Indian Legal

Mind you, these estimations, are done by a mere layman who doesn’t claim economic expertise. That being said, ₹8119 crore is a huge amount of money that can easily be diverted to actual problems faced by the 1.3 billion people who live here.