Every statue that is deemed valuable holds a significant meaning. Statue of Unity, located in Gujarat is an epic bronze sculpture measuring 600 feet (182m), outsmarting China’s Spring Temple Buddha (153m) and USA’s Statue of Liberty (93m). It was designed and built in 33 months at a whopping cost of Rs.2,989 crore. Statue of Unity of Sardar Vallabhbai Patel was inaugurated by PM Narendra Modi on October 31 on the leader’s birth anniversary.
The great ‘Statue of Unity’ is dedicated to Sardar Patel, popularly known as ‘Iron Man of India’.
The state CM said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had gathered iron, soil and water from across the nation to effectively use those ingredients in a bid to build the statue in Gujarat, it was an important decision announced by PM Modi in 2013 when he was the at the helm of Gujarat as the chief minister.
It is the “symbol of the country’s unity and integrity” and the Gujarat government describe it as “the statue of unity”.
On the contrary, people have passed on absurd comments about wasting so much money on building this particular statue alone as it could have been used to build hospitals, schools and bridges and so on.
Social media economist and YouTuber, Dhruv Rathee wrote an article as his caption reads: “Even if Statue of Unity becomes as famous as Taj Mahal, we may need 120 years to break even.”
In the article, he echoed that Taj Mahal earns annual revenue of 25 crore rupees and, “It would be optimistic to hope that the Sardar Patel Statue of Unity will get even a tenth of that number. But even if we assume that the Statue of Unity becomes as popular as the Taj Mahal, it would take more than 120 years to just break even.”
As per the report published in the year 2016, the Taj Mahal earned Rs 75 crores in the last three years in revenues through the sale of tickets and other paid services. But, according to the latest report about the revenue from Statue of Unity, the statue of Sardar Patel has been visited by over 26 lakh tourists and earned 71.66 crore rupees in the first 11 months itself. The overall statue cost 3,000 crore rupees, and taking this rate of revenue into account, the project would take less than 50 years to recover the whole amount.
It is worth mentioning here that Statue of Unity is already among the top 25 most visited places in the world. Statue of Unity has already been visited by more than 2.6 million people in the first 11 months. By the end of one year of opening of the structure to public, the monument is likely to surpass Tower of London which received 2.85 million tourists in the year 2018.
At present, Tower of London is the beautiful structure in the great city of London and Statue of Unity is expected to dethrone it when the data for the whole year will be released by the end of the year. Sardar Patel Rashtriya Ekta Trust, which is the managing organization of the structure will release the one-year data very soon, as the structure had finished one year of public opening in October end.