Editorial»
Wanna have a Saddam Doll?
DEC 20 - So the Ace of Spades has finally met his Waterloo or to be more specific his Tikrit. I am talking about who else but a certain Saddam Hussein, who until last week was one of the most wanted men on this planet. Last week when television images showed him being shoved out of a narrow ill-lit spider hole and the global cameras zoomed into the bedraggled, shaggy visage of man who looked like he hadn’t had a bath in years, it was difficult to believe this beggar-like persona was the same Saddam who had ruled Iraq, to use a terrible cliché, with an iron hand for the better part of three decades.
This X-mas and the coming New Year will see Saddam behind bars, as the spotlight once again turns on Bush and Co (that includes Britain’s Tony Blair too) who have once gone to town hailing the arrest of the “most hated man” one individual political milestone in their chequered careers. The duo is shouting from the rooftops of the world that finally they have the $ 25 million man in their pockets.
For Saddam himself, his past has at last caught up with him, albeit a wee bit dramatically. But then, as you will all know, is there anything less than dramatic about Saddam’s rise to stratospheric heights and eventual fall to sub-zero levels?
The wheel has come full circle for Saddam Hussein. The Saddam the world saw before his arrest was an arrogant, fiercely egoistic, America bashing, invective hurling, moustache twirling, one man demolition army who took on the mighty super power and challenged Bush, Tony and their cronies to a brutal no-holds-barred winner takes all fight to death.
But the image the world saw of Saddam post his arrest indeed cut a very sorry figure. Gone was his flamboyance, his famed arrogance, his bulging biceps, his cock sure confidence. Instead out of the bare apology of a hole, crept out much unlike a rat, a loser, a man whose body language screamed out despair, fear and weakness. An exact antidote to the ferocious lion–like figure the world had known or the fast paced market driven international media had led us all to believe.
Marketing pundits today have gone in for what is called in advertising parlance the overkill. Within hours of the fallen dictator’s arrest and subsequent shameful parading before the world, US super stores are choc-a-block with Saddams, Saddams and some more Saddams. Marketing wiz kids have metamorphosed The Evil Dictator into a mere doll.
The message is loud and clear. Saddam is no longer Public Enemy Number One. You can have him, complete with beard and villainous look, for a mere $30. From tragedy to comedy to a farce. Hats off to the sheer consumerist culture that does not fight shy of even making moolah out of such devilish events.
Murder of India’s conscience
What do you do when you switch open your television sets and see the body of a promising young man lying unattended on a dark, lonely road, riddled with bullets. Nothing, the cynics among us would say, adding that this happens everyday in India. True and yet untrue. True because death has become a very expendable commodity in India. And untrue, because not everyday do we get to see on prime time the blood splattered image of one of the most upright young men that India has offered in a long, long time to come.
When the body of Satyendra Kumar Dubey, a 31-year-old Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduate working with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, was found riddled with bullets in his hometown on November 27, the needle of suspicion turned towards local mafia engaged in construction business.
Dubey was on a three-year deputation to the National Highways Authority of India, which is realising Prime Minister AB Vajpayee’s dream Golden Quadrilateral Project. At the time of his killing he was Deputy General Manager of a busy 60-km rural section of the project.
Dubey’s killing would have gone unnoticed had his fellow IIT mates not raised a hue and cry. He is the third IIT graduate to fall to the mafia bullets in Bihar and they feared that the crime would never be solved given the Bihar Police’s track record. Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy, an IIT alumnus, urged the Prime Minister to act against those responsible for the killings. The furore they managed to kick up forced Vajpayee to order a CBI investigation into the killing. The people of India are now hoping that the investigation would unmask the killer, the perpetrators and the officials who connived.
Dubey had been anticipating such an attack after he wrote a confidential letter to Vajpayee on November 11 last year, highlighting the violation of subletting clause in the road construction. “The highway authority is going for international competitive bidding to get the most competent contractor for the execution of its projects,” he wrote. “When it comes to actual execution it is found that most works, some times even up to 100 per cent, being sub-let or sub-contracted to petty contractors, who are not at all capable to execute such projects and ensure the quality of the construction.”
Dubey had requested that his name should not be made public. Instead of taking any action, the Prime Minister’s Office forwarded the letter to the road transport ministry which forwarded it to the national highways authority. By the time the letter had got ample publicity, so did Dubey’s name. Early this year he wrote to the Chairman of the national highways authority that he feared for his life.
Dubey was known, nee revered. Colleagues remember him as an upright officer, who never compromised on quality. Once he even made a sub-contractor relay a stretch of road which he believed was sub standard. Dubey, who hailed from a remote heartland of rural Bihar, came up the hard way in life. The family had to sacrifice a lot to send their son to IIT Kanpur and they did it happily. But now, their grief knows no bounds.
Dubey’s killing has unnerved all right thinking men and women not just in India but elsewhere too, it is a huge blow for all those who believe in standing up to corruption and raising their voice against the corrupt. If this is what happens when one complains about large-scale corruption in a project touted as the PM’s pet project then one shudders to think what fate befalls the common man.Posted on: 2003-12-21 02:08
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