Social media users are sharing this wrong math calculation about the cost of 'Statue of Unity' - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
July 13, 2022
A social media post taking a jibe at the government for spending thousands of crores on building statues is being circulated widely across platforms. The post instead proposes that if the same amount is distributed among the citizens, and in an attempt to explain the math behind this, the post claims that each citizen would get Rs. 14.81 cr, if the 2,000 crores is distributed among the 135 crore population.  Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Each citizen would get Rs. 14.81 crores, if the 2000 crores spent on building a statute is distributed among the 135 crore population.
Fact: Each individual would get just 14.81 rupees and not 14.81 crores, if 2,000 crores is distributed among 135 crore population of the country. Such simple calculation failures are often being shared on social media on different issues. For instance, such wrong calculations are also shared when Elon Musk announced the $44 billion Twitter acquisition plan. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The government of India in 2018 inaugurated a statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat. The cost of the project is estimated to be nearly 3000 crores. Since then, multiple states have also embarked on building such statues with huge outlays.
However, the government’s decision of spending significant amounts on these statues invited criticism from certain quarters. Critics claim that government could have spent this amount on education or health sector or welfare etc. The viral post also tries to make one such attempt by explaining how each individual could be benefited  if the amount is distributed among the citizens.
However, the math explained in the post wrongly claims that each citizen would get 14.81 crore, if 2000 crores is distributed among the total population of the country (135 crores). However, it is not 14.81 crore but just 14.81 rupees, that an individual would get if 2000 crores are distributed among a population of 135 crores.
Although this calculation seems to be a simple error that is to be understood by most people,  such trend of bad math is visible on social media quite often. For example, ever since Elon musk announced his $44 billion Twitter acquisition plan, several social media users posted similar math calculations, saying each individual would get 5 billion dollars if the anticipated $44 billion is distributed among the 8 billion population of the world.
Even few verified social media users are also posting such calculations, one such example can be seen here. A verified twitter user claims that each individual would get $5 billion dollars if the $44 billion is distributed among the 8 billion population of the world.
However, distribution of $44 billion among the 8 billion, would give just $5.5 for each individual and not $5 billion. Multiple users are posting such wrong calculations, few of them can be seen here, here and here. Few other social media users are blindly believing the calculations and are spreading the narrative by share these messages.
To sum it up, social media users are going wrong on simple math calculations related to the cost of statue of unity.