Is spending INR 20,000 Cr on the new Parliament building justified?
Opinion
We often run into arguments on these lines. We saw a flurry of these when the Modi government signed a MoU with the Japanese government for the Bullet train project. We also saw similar questions hurled on the government when they funded the Sardar Patel statue in Gujarat.
The argument is always structured like this: “Is spending INR XYZ Cr. on a project justified when we have poor people who cannot feed themselves?”
Let’s talk specifically about the case at hand. The new Parliament building and central vista redevelopment project is expected to cost INR 20,000 Cr.
The justification
Currently, Indian government spends ~INR 1000 Cr every year on office rent for various ministries which will be saved. The current parliament building is ~100 years old.
There are security concerns to India’s top leadership in the current structure which need to be eliminated.
Moreover, there’s a concept of budgeting. Different projects bring different direct and indirect goodness to the country in the long run.
Pardon the exaggeration, but the current argument is similar to asking “Why are we spending so many crores on creating an airport when there are so many poor people in the country? People can travel using trains too, right?”
It doesn’t work that way.
The indirect benefits
Look at the Sardar Patel statue for instance. It cost INR 2000 Cr. to build it. We do not factor in the point that a significant chunk of that amount was paid to daily wage labourers who built it. The statue has increased the land prices of the villages nearby and it has also become a tourist attraction, thereby increasing employment prospects.
The real need!
We cannot mix working on poverty with miscellaneous expenditures. It is also important to note that we cannot really eradicate poverty directly using money. Eradication of poverty needs a structural fix at a policy level which the government is separately working on. Throwing money at the issue will not solve it.
That being said, it is important to question the government on the way they spend the taxpayers’ money. The government should be made to justify the cost and also should be questioned on the opportunity costs involved. We should push the government to give visibility on the budgeting and prioritization done for a project. That is where we can question the merit of the project. Can we probably invest in healthcare or education? What do you think?
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