India's elections will cost Rs 30,000 cr. What can you buy with that kind of money?

[caption id=“attachment_80231” align=“alignnone” width=“860”] India’s elections are estimated to cost a whopping Rs 30,000 crore ($5 billion). That’s how much the government will spend on organising the polls, as well as candidate and party expenditure on campaigning. It makes the upcoming Lok Sabha elections the most expensive in India’s history. So what else can you do with that kind of money? We present some ideas. For a start, you can buy about 59 Boeing 737 aircraft with $5 billion, given that the average 2013 list price of a Boeing 737, the world’s best-selling commercial aircraft by sales, is about $58 million. Image: Reuters[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_80232” align=“alignnone” width=“860”] You can build 3,750 kilometres of road network, assuming the cost of building one kilometer of paved road is estimated at roughly Rs 8 crore (excluding land costs). Image: Reuters[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_80233” align=“alignnone” width=“860”] You can buy 13 million Acer Gateway laptops, one of the cheaper models available in the country. The Acer model we have considered costs about Rs about Rs 23, 200. Image: Reuters[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_80234” align=“alignnone” width=“860”] You can purchase around 48 million barrels of crude oil, assuming the price of crude at $105 per barrel. India imported 3.86 million barrels-per-day of crude oil last year, so $5 billion covers roughly 12 days of imports. Image: Reuters[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_80237” align=“alignnone” width=“860”] You can go on a lavish 17-day holiday in Europe more than one million times. Assuming the cost per person at around Rs 2,30,000, you can traipse around London, Prague, Antwerp, Vienna, Munich, Rome, Zurich and some more vibrant destinations with that kind of money. Image: Reuters[/caption]