When you look at the pictures there is little to go by for the scale of things, just the river in the valley and the statue. (and alot of tiny unrecognizable stuff) The effect is it just looks like a picture of a gentleman standing peacefully next to a small stream. Maybe that was the desired effect.

He's twice the size of Liberty.
It's too bad all that money didn't go to feeding the starving unwashed, or into reviving the dying rail system. A dozen extra cars would ensure that the normal 20% of passengers weren't riding on the roof or hanging off the side. (Luckily, only 15k people die on those each year.)
Governments sure have weird priorities.

What a fantastic pissing contest to establish who is a better Indian, Nehru or Patel. This ego trip cost $430 million in a country with an average annual wage of $600 where half of more than a billion citizens don't even have a toilet. Another example of a third world country's order of priorities. Showing the rest of the planet that they are just as corrupt and fiscally incompetent as the best of other banana republics.

India may not be as rich (by our standards), but it's good that the country wants to commemorate this freedom fighter who helped get the Brits out, but as a Westerner, I find his pose and dress unflattering or even uninspiring. To each their own culture. We're not exactly the paragon of good taste either.

Very impressive.
@Rustin: I like the effect of the scale (or lack there of). As you pointed out, it just looks like a guy standing next to a stream. Too cool.
But also controversial as @Ijaques points out. Hopefully it brings a lot of tourism (and thus $) to India.

The Wikipedia article has the cool details of construction (tons of this and that). Here's a photo showing scale: https://tinyurl.com/ScaleOfPatelStatue
As for the money-better-spent-on-important-things objection, Americans spend more on lipstick and hair gel. Or pet food. Or Halloween. Beer. Weed. Health-care corporations spend more on lobbying against Medicare For All. And I think fossil fuel companies spend more on simply lying about climate change. And we just spent many times as much putting out a line of instantly obsolete bug-ridden war planes, and ridiculous sitting-duck war ships that dwarf that statue and that will be burning treasure and resources for decades.
It's art. It's big. At least Pakistan and India aren't nuking each other.

Awful, reminds me of those giant statues in Lord of the Rings statues. Wonder what else could be done with the money. Vanity projects suit no one.

There's something disquieting about the scale of a human figure or other things when they reach a certain size. Even though it's the representation of a gentle figure, at that scale, it reminds me of Talos somehow, ( the giant automaton from the tales of Jason),. Good thing they didn't build it to turn it's head or move in some way. I'd have nightmares. In some of the images, it almost looks cgi,ed-in. That aside, it is an amazing work of engineering, I'll give it that.

Was it pricey, yes, especially in a pretty poor country. But, can you put a price on pride? I have no problem with a country building a statue to celebrate their independence.

@ljaques it's a stupid argument to say the money didn't go to feeding the starved. Same can be said of any expenditure a country makes, there is no price on celebrating pride and freedom. Patel was not just a freedom fighter, he united small countries to make what is India today.
The picture of an overcrowded train with people on the roof and assume that's business as usual for Indian Railways, sorry to burst your bubble but the picture is from Bangladesh and Indian trains don't have people sitting on roofs.