Indian politician spends $1 billion on statues of herself

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I cant believe this! This make me angry.

Indian politician Mayawati Kumari has spent $1 billion (yes that is billion with a B) of tax payers money on building dozens of statues of herself and other low-caste leaders (Dalits). Despite the $1 billion spent on the statues, she remains very popular amongst India's downtrodden Dalits.

I think this money could have been better spent.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8484769.stm

Oh come on. All that money they make from taking American call center and programming jobs has to go somewhere, doesn't it?

I'm trying to wrap my head around the ego explosion there. Imagine putting up even one statue of yourself!

I try to get into somebody's head to understand *why*. I'm not making much headway on this one - can't find a motive beyond ego, which is insane.

Is she trying to break the caste system?

What was the ultimate destination of that $1 billion? Is she laundering money? If a lower caste received $1 billion, would they be lower for long?

This makes me feel so angry, what about the 11 million homeless children living on the Indian streets.

Is that 1 billion US? or 1 billion Rupee (probably the latter)?

yeah, there's probably a huge statue of a cubicle in Bangalore...

I agree that money can be much, much better spent. Maybe there's a reason why they need a police force to protect the statues...because the people really hate that they didn't spend the tax payers' money well! It's just a waste of money when there are millions of homeless kids on the street. I agree that it is a bit conceited to build a statue of yourself. I would say that if someone lived a worthy enough life for another individual to build a statue of them, then they really deserve it. But when someone just takes the peoples' hard-earned money and builds a statue of themselves then I think that there's some kind of problem. If they were really concerned about building statues in India then they should make more of Gandhi or another meaningful Indian historical figure than just a small contemporary, living political figure.

Politics in India has always been so. They are making a fuss about her because she's spending money on statues while she's alive. Other parties tend to spend the money on statues of their deceased leaders instead.

They're all the same.