India
The Statue of Unity is the tallest in the world, twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, announcing the location of India to travellers along sea routes on the Arabian Sea.
Vadodara: Narendra Modi's ambitious project is going to make its mark on world history. Statue of Unity will be unveiled on October 31, on the birthday of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, and this will earn an iconic status across the globe.
Patel is a historic Indian nationalist crucial to the Indian freedom struggle and political organisation of India after independence. Modi’s nationalist project along with development in the tourism sector explains Patel’s extraordinary memorialisation.
While Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he introduced the ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ initiative with an international trade fair. The initiative focused on inviting international investment into Gujarat. Along with that, the concept of building the Statue of Unity in memory of Sardar Vallabhai Patel was also a part of Modi’s initiative to bring India to the frontline among the developing nations.
The statue encourages the Hindu nationalist perspective of Indian history and calls for unity, and all the while, the tourism development aims at promoting free trade and seeking foreign investment into the state. The whole project comes with a huge price tag of approximately Rs 3000 crore, and the Statue of Unity is being built with Chinese materials along with their labor.
Apparently, the roads leading to the statue of Sardar Vallabhai Patel on the Sardar Sarovar Dam are being broadened to make the drive easier, and hotels and restaurants will surely follow.
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