The Spectacle of Waste: When Development Grandeur Masks a Shrinking Economy and a Starved Education System
In a country where net foreign direct investment (FDI) is plummeting, should crores of rupees be splurged on the inauguration of a single international airport? The question is not rhetorical—it is an audit of priorities. Yet, when the Bhogapuram International Airport in Andhra Pradesh was inaugurated with a lavish ceremony, the government did not disclose the expenditure. The media did not ask. Meanwhile, in the Rajya Sabha, the same government revealed that net FDI for 2025-26 hovers around a mere 6 billion dollars. In 2022-23, India’s net FDI stood at 27.99 billion dollars. By 2024-25, it had slumped to less than one billion dollars—a staggering 97 percent decline. But the grand spectacle of the inauguration would have us believe that India is swimming in so much wealth that it must be burned in such pageantry.
The Grand Illusion of the Bhogapuram Airport Inauguration
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s event in Andhra Pradesh, thousands of schoolgirls were assembled like a crowd, made to perform a traditional tribal dance, Timsa, to create a Guinness World Record. The ostensible celebration of cultural heritage came at a steep price—one the government has refused to quantify. Over 13,500 students in pink-and-green attire were organized into 433 groups, ferried in 3,000 buses, and made to rehearse endlessly. They waited for hours before the Prime Minister’s convoy passed. But what were the real costs? Was even a token amount paid to these girls? In 2023, Assam’s Bihu record event paid each participant Rs 25,000. That was announced proudly. Here, silence.
The expenditure did not end there. Before the main event, a practice session for 5,000 students was held in the presence of Andhra Pradesh’s Special Chief Secretary M.T. Krishna Babu and Collector Ram Sundar Reddy. That, too, cost money. No accounts were shared. The entire exercise was designed to cushion the political image of a leader at a time when young Indians are on the streets, under lathis, demanding a credible examination system and accountability from the Education Minister.
Guinness Record Mania: At What Cost?
The Guinness Book of World Records is a for-profit private company. To get a record certified, you pay a fee, invite their team, and stage the attempt. India’s government has become a repeat customer. For the Bihu record in Assam, the government later admitted through an RTI that it paid Rs 1.6 crore to Guinness. For the Jhumur dance of 8,888 tea garden workers in Guwahati in February 2025, similar costs were incurred. In Bhogapuram, the expenditure is still hidden. The Prime Minister’s YouTube channel shows a sanitized video—a van gliding past dancers, no public in sight, but party flags of BJP, TDP, and Jana Sena Party parked prominently on the vehicle. The Ashoka Stambha, which should be at the centre, was pushed to the side. State funds paid for a political brand-melding exercise.
The Guinness fixation extends even to ‘Pariksha Pe Charcha’, where 3.53 crore registrations in a month were declared a world record. In a nation where an exam cannot be conducted without paper leaks and protests, the government chases a certification for collecting the most registrations—most of them likely from schools coerced into mass sign-ups. How much was paid to Guinness for that? That money could have funded scholarships for thousands of students. Instead, it was handed to a private entity in exchange for a certificate.
Education: The Sacrificial Lamb
While crores are poured into political mega-events, India’s education budget has been gutted. In 2013-14, education spending was 4.6% of the total budget. By 2025-26, it has fallen to just 2.5%. Over the past decade, more than 93,000 schools have been shut down or merged, and a shocking 2.25 crore children have dropped out. Yet the government finds no money to keep these children in classrooms. But it finds limitless resources to dress up students in coordinated costumes and parade them for a record that the Guinness company profits from.
Empty Airports and Vaporous Promises
The pattern goes beyond dance records. India has opened airports that remain dormant. Khajuraho’s airport recently received a top consumer satisfaction ranking. In July, that airport did not witness a single commercial flight—not one take-off or landing. It was a phantom award for a phantom facility.
The Kushinagar International Airport was inaugurated with great fanfare in October 2021, ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections. The project cost Rs 327 crore. Yet, since November 2023, the airport has been shut down. Ashok Upadhyay, through an RTI, revealed that maintenance costs of crores continue even when the airport is dead. Airports are built not where demand exists, but where electoral cycles demand a visual of progress. A real hospital or a functional college would serve the public, but that doesn't make for a photo-op with a Boeing in the background.
The Plunge of Net FDI: A Table of Decline
| Financial Year | Net FDI (in billion USD) |
|---|---|
| 2022-23 | 27.99 |
| 2024-25 | Less than 1 |
| 2025-26 (early estimate) | Approx. 6 |
*Source: Rajya Sabha reply, government data. The 97% drop between 2022-23 and 2024-25 reflects not a global trend but a crisis of investor confidence.
Aesthetics of Power: How Spectacle Replaces Accountability
The political theorist Walter Benjamin wrote about the “aestheticization of politics”—turning governance into a grand, beautiful spectacle so that citizens, mesmerized, forget their own miseries. Fascism, he noted, thrives on such pageantry. When thousands gather and millions watch on screens, they see not their own poverty and despair but a larger-than-life projection of the leader. The event becomes a ritual in which the public, instead of being questioning citizens, become an audience to a grand show. Ram Mandir consecrations, massive Yoga Day extravaganzas, G20 summits in every corner, and record-dance assemblies all serve one purpose: to shift focus from crumbling schools, unaffordable healthcare, and jobless growth towards an intoxicating visual of national glory.
The government’s reply to every crisis is another record, another inauguration, another flood of official photographs. But the numbers tell the real story: FDI collapsing, children out of school, airports shut after a single political season. The “vikas” narrative is sustained not by material change but by sensory overload. The van moves slowly, the dancers move in sync, the cameras capture it all, and the public is told they are witnessing history. But history does not fill empty stomachs or reopened schools.
What the Public Is Not Told
The lack of transparency is deliberate. In Delhi, the BJP promised Rs 2,500 per month to women under the Mahila Samridhi Yojana. But the scheme came with a maze of conditions: a dedicated Program Management Unit, verification by district officers, a monitoring committee, a grievance redressal committee, exclusion for families with three children, for those consuming more than 2,400 units of electricity, and for households earning over Rs 2.5 lakh annually. So the woman struggling to make ends meet must navigate an obstacle course for a promise that was sold as a simple guarantee. Meanwhile, the same government spends unknown crores on one Prime Ministerial event after another, without a single question answered.
Criticisms
- Public funds were burned on a lavish airport inauguration while the country’s net FDI registered a historic collapse.
- Thousands of schoolgirls were forcibly assembled and made to practise for weeks, sacrificing their education to create a photo-op and a private Guinness record.
- Party flags were displayed on a state-funded vehicle during an official event, violating the neutrality of public expenditure.
- No accounts of the Bhogapuram event expenditure were provided to the public or the media.
- The education budget was systematically gutted, from 4.6% to 2.5% of the total budget, while colossal sums were diverted to cultural spectacles.
- More than 93,000 schools were closed or merged, and 2.25 crore children dropped out in a decade, but crores were spent on dance records.
- Crores of rupees were paid to the Guinness Book of World Records—a private for-profit company—for certifications that brought zero developmental value.
- Airports were inaugurated in Kushinagar and Khajuraho at enormous cost, then abandoned, with maintenance costs still draining the exchequer.
- The media’s failure to question the expenditure on these events was exploited to perpetuate the spectacle without accountability.
- A culture of political aestheticization was engineered, where grand ceremonies replaced genuine governance, and citizens were reduced to spectators of their own marginalization.
- The Prime Minister’s official YouTube channel was used to airbrush reality—showing a sanitized event devoid of the public, while the political branding was carefully staged.
- Repeated Guinness records were pursued using government machinery, while basic services like healthcare and education remained starved of funds.
- The state’s complicity in converting tribal and folk traditions into mass choreographed performances drained their cultural essence for political optics.
- Instead of addressing youth demands for a fair examination system, the regime spent public money on a “Pariksha Pe Charcha” registration record, mocking student struggles.
This is not governance. This is a carefully constructed theatre where the audience is supposed to clap while their own resources are incinerated. The question must not be what record was broken, but why the public is never allowed to see the bill. Because once the bill is seen, the illusion of development shatters, and what remains is a painful audit of priorities—one where a crores-strong dance ensemble mattered more than a single functional school.
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