‘Make in India’, take a break! While Narendra Modi trots around the globe exhorting the suited-booted people of the business world to use India as a manufacturing hub, China still rules—even when it comes to a project close to the prime minister’s heart. The ‘Statue of Unity’, Modi’s 182-metre tall salute to the Iron Man of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, is being smelted and cast into existence not on the soil that was dear to the Sardar—and is, to Chhote Sardar Modi—but has been outsourced to a foundry 96 hours and 6,132 km to the east of Ahmedabad, in the People’s Republic of China.

It will please the Guinness World Records-fixated prime minister that the ‘World’s Tallest Statue’ that was his dream is being poured into shape by 700 workers of the “world’s biggest foundry”, the Jiangxi Tongqing Metal Handicrafts Company, at its 51,000 square metre workshop in Nanchang province in eastern China. Multiple sources have confirmed to Outlook that the Chinese...