China’s creation has been of necessity, while India’s statue is more about luxury.
It is an ironic lesson of comparison and a rather tragic one at that. While India just unveiled its gala mega-structure known as the Statue of Unity, China created the World’s biggest air purifier, in a bid to help their congested cities breathe cleaner air, and it seems to be working well for now. The two different structures serve very different purposes in society and opinion is sharply divided on both of them. However, the generalized opinion has rather come out that India could try taking a page of China’s book, and attempt to build something more useful rather than 182m long statue of a leader who practiced austerity and placed more importance on the national integrity than himself.
The Statue of Unity is definitely a one of a kind statue dedicated to the Iron Man of India
The criticism of the statue doesn’t mean that the first home minister, Sardar Vallabhai Patel’s accomplishments are being overlooked. The Iron Man had indeed created the unified front in India and brought all the warring and discordant states together. He had many accolades in his name and is worthy of praise and adulation on his 143rd birthday. However, building a 420 million dollar statue is being considered as a rather excess statement considering there are so many other pressing issues within India to focus on.
Reviews about the statue from abroad have been rather mixed.
The international quarters has provided both praise and criticism over the statue; from all newspapers reporting on how this will become a significant tourist destination and give India the distinction of having the tallest statue, to a British MP commenting on how funds to India should no longer be provided since they already have so much money to build this.
While it should be pointed out that many other countries have built similar large statues dedicated to religious or national symbols and are definitely not something to be scoffed at, the expenses incurred in building the statue might have had better use by getting scaled-down and being utilized in different other sectors like women’s rights, poverty issues, and educational and nutritional requirements; to name a few.
China’s air purifier is apparently functioning in top condition and helping the environment.
On the other hand, China has finally built a plausible solution to its long-overdue problem of smog and air pollution. With almost three of its cosmopolitan cities lying in the top ten list of polluted cities in the world and facing the death of 1.8 million citizens due to smog, China was hard-pressed to find a solution. It has built and tested the world’s largest air purifier tower of the height of more than 100 meters in the city of Xian. It has a total capacity of purifying ten million cubic meters of air per day, thus capable of clearing the air considerably on the most polluted days.
The main scientist of the project, known as Cao Junji, has already claimed that positive results are pouring in, and explained the mechanism of functioning of the tower. The tower has many greenhouses in the base which pull in the smog and heat it and pass it through the filters present above. It has also received praise from the environmentalists who are happy with this kind of solutions and envision a dream of a cleaner city. Many such towers will be placed near public properties and parks to clean up the most affected areas of pollution.
The contrast is seen as one Asian country celebrates its national integrity with an expensive statue, while others build a solution to its environmental problems. Now it is up to you to decide which action was a better one and which one is a more commendable choice for you.