Not just an expensive building, could divide the nation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of a new parliament building in the center of New Delhi yesterday. The parliament building will be part of a 'Central Vista Project' at a total cost of Rs 200 billion. There will also be a new residence and office for the prime minister and the vice president. Modi "praised India's spirit of democracy" and said that "other countries discuss elections and other administrative issues when speaking about democracy and that a day would soon come when other countries will say 'India is mother of democracy'." A batch of petitions against the new building have been filed before the Supreme Court which allowed the ceremony to go ahead but ruled that "no construction or demolition will be allowed until it disposes pleas opposing the Central Vista Project". "World history is replete with examples of public infrastructure projects playing a key role in reviving economies in distress," wrote Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Durga Shanker Mishra. "The 'New Deal' in he USA included over 34,000 public works worth $3 billion for recovery from the Great Depression." Indeed. The famous Route 66 in the US, "True to promoters' foresight, traffic on the highway increased, a growing share of it long-distance, and the need for food, fuel, repairs and shelter transformed the economies of towns through which the route passed." A new parliament building will generate some construction jobs initially but will cost massive amounts of taxpayer money for maintenance and members of parliament are exempt from paying income tax. "The first Lok Sabha, constituted in 1952 had 461 seats , but within three years, the number increased to 499. 'Subsequently, the seats went up to 522, then to 530' and 'now, presently up 550 within the same building' according to documents" available in the Lok Sabha secretariat, wrote Saubhadra Chatterji. At present the Lok Sabha has 543 members while the Rajya Sabha has 245. A larger building is needed to seat 888 members in the Lok Sabha and 384 in the Rajya Sabha. That indicates imminent delimitation, which seeks to allocate the number of seats in parliament according to population in states so that each member represents roughly equal number of people. "Although unintended, this meant that states that took little interest in population control could end up with more seats in Parliament, while southern states that promoted family planning could end up with fewer seats." As it is the Hindi states have a stranglehold on the parliament with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of prime minister Modi winning 156 out of 303 seats in Hindi states, in the Lok Sabha in 2019. The present distribution of seats in the Lok Sabha has not changed in decades but populations of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have increased more than 19% while those of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have increased by about 18%, between 2011 and 2019. Not just enormous expense. Could lead to further division of India. Is that what Modi wants?