Rupees 1,100,000,000,000. Or Rs 110,000 crores!
That's the approximate amount of money the world's third richest man Lakshmi N Mittal is valued at.
What can a man do with that kind of money? Well, with that:
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He can wipe out the entire debt of cash-strapped Maharashtra (Rs 105,000 crore at last count) and still have enough small change (Rs 5,000 crore) to be counted among the country's rich and famous.
- He can four- or six-lane all of India's national highways two times over. (Government estimates say that the ambitious highway project would cost India Rs 55,000 crore).
- He can buy 4,400,000 (44 lakh) Maruti 800 cars. That means he can buy every Maruti 800 sold in India for the next 34 years! (calculated at today's prices, assuming that 130,000 Maruti 800s are sold each year).
- Or, if Marutis are not his style, he can buy 22,000 of the Rs 5-crore Maybach luxury cars.
- He can clear off over 20% of India's external debt of about $120 billion.
- He can buy 35% of all of India exports this year (India's exports touched a record $70 billion this year).
- He can eat McDonalds Family Value Meal (@ Rs 199 twice a day) for the next 7,500,000 years!
- He can stay at Taj Mahal hotel's (Mumbai) grand luxury suite (@ Rs 42,650 per night) for 70,661 years (you could lop off a couple of thousand years if he's ordering room service).
- He accounts for 3.84% of India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -- which in 2004-05 was approximately at $650 billion.
- He can make rupee millionaires of the entire population of the cities of Howrah or Meerut or Varanasi or Nashik (these cities have populations between 10 lakh to 11 lakh as per the 2001 census).
- Give every Indian (Yes, you, me and the rest of the billion of us) $25 (Rs 1,084).
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He can also fly 55 million Indians to and fro London on Air-India flights (with air fares plummeting Air-India is offering a one-way fare to London of about Rs 20,000)!
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He already owns the world's most expensive housewhich he bought last year in central London at a stunning price of $128.25 million. He can buy 190 more of those at yet have over half-a-billion dollars left at his disposal.
Mittal's 25 billion dollar-notes would weigh 2.5 million kg (a dollar bill weighs 1 gram).
Note: All figures have been rounded off for easy comprehension. All rupee figures are approximate. The value of the dollar (which is at Rs 43.54 currently) has been calculated @ Rs 44.
