Amongst the great manmade places visible from outer space are the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China , and the Palm Islands of Dubai. Now added to the list is the 600-foot figure of Sardar Patel — so tall, at dusk it casts a mile-long shadow over an enormous dry agricultural stretch. Without irrigation facilities in the fields around the statue, farmers face continual drought. Sadly, Sardar Patel’s high gaze ignores their fallow land, and is directed instead into a wilderness far greater, across all India (Ironically the base of the statue houses a research centre dedicated to good governance and agricultural development).One of the unfortunate tragedies of building such a massive statue in undeveloped landscape is that its monumental impact is lost to the open terrain. Without active comparison to other manmade structures, the size of Sardar Patel is dwarfed by nature’s naturally monumental setting, and in the end the crucial aspect of height is lost. By contrast, the Statue of Liberty, which in reality is only one quarter the size of Sardar Patel is visually grander; its island presence a mere kilometre away from the backdrop of Lower Manhattan’s skyscrapers makes a stirring visual impact.The government’s failure to comprehend the difference between a statue and a sculpture makes the reading of Sardar Patel merely one-dimensional, as if a child in a stroke of monumental play, increased the toy to giant size. In a country of India’s monumental size and equally vivid sculptural skills, the idea of building a blunt pictorial representation out of public funds, with an artistic hand from China, is a matter of colossal idiocy. The 42-month-long process and the unwholesome expenditure of Rs 3,000 crore can hardly be justified.Beyond uniting the princely states into a union with India, what then is the larger idea of a statue of unity? If the architectural brief for a great public figure of national importance were promoted as a competition open to Indian artists and architects, perhaps the results may have surprised the committee managing the project. Could an abstraction that goes beyond historic events and becomes a symbol for the future been a more appropriate symbol of unity? The failure of will, risk, historic interpretation, vision and eventual image shows up the present resolve of the government as puny, mean-spirited and lacking ideas.At the time an inert Sardar Patel was rising in Gujarat, China was constructing an air purifier of similar gargantuan dimensions in Xian, a city with pollution levels as apocalyptic as many Indian cities. The 350-foot-high structure in steel is an innovative high-rise adaption of a greenhouse that absorbs the city smog and passes it through a series of cleansing filters fitted into a chimney stack, before releasing it back to the atmosphere as clean air. The effect of the filter felt over a 10-12 km radius, has been so successful that many more are planned in industrial cities along China’s eastern belt.Perhaps that is where the real solution lies — in fusing two ideas into one. Had Sardar Patel been lifted into the smog of Delhi, Lucknow or Jaipur as a giant anti-pollution stack, not only reminding the visitors of his historic greatness but contributing to the current life of the city, perhaps the money would have been better spent. For the cost of one Sardar Patel, 200 such towers could have been built in cities all across India. Could similarly a 600-foot Mahatma Gandhi be built in Varanasi as a waste management plant, or a giant Jayalalithaa in Chennai as a filtration unit for the city’s water supply?On par with an assembly of cement and bronze raised into a familiar figure in forlorn countryside, the government’s theatre of absurdity carries an uncertain message; the future of India is to be enriched not by the execution of value-based, economically sound ideas, but an arrogant show of might and pretence. When real problems are intractable and without solution, people will believe anything for a short while — even bits of historic nostalgia.Soon enough, another star from history is set to rise in the Arabian Sea off Mumbai — a 327-foot-high statue of Shivaji on a horse sitting atop of a massive museum base, surrounded by crashing ocean waves. The fear that an 81% Hindu India may one day be crushed under the avalanche of 13% Muslims and 6% Christians, Buddhists and others, keeps the government pressing on with statues of monumental caricature; like other caricatures — the vast Mayawatis, Ambedkars and Shivajis — this assembly of 22,500 metric tons of cement too will soon be forgotten.DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.