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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 48 foreign trips to 55 countries have cost the exchequer more than Rs 2,021 crore in chartered flights, aircraft maintenance and hotline facilities, Parliament has been told.

Simultaneously, it has been revealed that the Modi government has spent Rs 5,246 crore on publicity of its plans and programmes. (Despite which it has been said after its recent electoral losses that its messaging is weak.)

Together, these ego trips add up to an eye-popping Rs 7,267 crore.

That is: Rs 72,670,000,000.

With just these seven-thousand crores—and there are hundreds of other expenses of the “jhola-carrying fakir” that are not known or not audited—the BJP-led NDA government could have accomplished these feats.

At Rs 28,000 per stent, installed a cardiac stent in 25.9 lakh Indians

At Rs 17,000 for each M3 version, bought 42 lakh EVMs

At Rs 1,600 per LPG connection, met the entire Ujwala outlay for 3 years

At Rs 150 per head, bought 48 cr Indians a weekday ticket to ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’

At 2,989 crore for a 182-metre Patel statue, built a two-and-a-half times taller statue standing at 442 metres.

At Rs 4,500 crore for 50 airports, revived 80 airports under UDAN scheme

At the 2022 price of Rs 177 per dose, buy vaccines for 41 crore children

At Rs 4,700 crore, met the flood demand from Kerala twice over

At Rs 7.28 crore for two years, bought journals and publications for JNU’s library for the next 1,000 years

At its auctioned price of Rs 4.3 cr, bought 1,686 suits monogrammed with his name

At Rs 700 cr each, helped conduct 10 weddings in Mukesh Ambani‘s family

At Rs 1,414 apiece, gifted 5.1 crore Indians a Reliance Jio phone on Amazon

At Rs 30 per tweet, enabled paid trolls to push out 242 crore messages, i.e. two messages to each of India’s “sava-sau karod” citizens

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Then again, the government has said the counties visited by Modi between 2014 and 2018 now figure among the top-10 countries from where India has received foreign direct investment.