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| Sunday, 16 January 2005 |
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The right column A strange wish On the eve of the New Year I asked a friend of mine what his New Year wish was. His answer baffled me. He said he wished if Nikita Khruschev was born again amidst us. Perhaps some of you may not have heard of the bloke. He is the small man that challenged Joseph Stalin, after the latter's death, of course. Stalin was the titanic Soviet leader for more than three decades. He was a national hero on account of his courageous leadership in the Second World War. Khruschev discovered a deadly sin of Stalin - the development of a personality cult. It was taboo under strict Communist morals. Instantly he (Khruschev) became a darling of the "Free World". We do not have a Communist regime here. In fact, what we have is its exact opposite - neo-liberal capitalism. Besides Communism is not in vogue nowadays, or for the present moment at least. Actually, Communism was declared dead by no less a person than Zbigniew Brzezinski - National Security Advisor to former US President Jimmy Carter. Then why does anyone want to resurrect Nikita Khruschev? These were my genuine doubts. I conveyed them to my friend. "You fool," he replied. "Can't you see the development of personality cult not around one personality but around dozens and dozens of politicians? Only a Nikita could challenge it." "One cannot even go to the toilet without their grace. Every new project that is planned is a brainwave of some politician. "Every new idea is theirs. Every new occurrence is theirs. Perhaps even the tsunami is theirs. "It is as if the mass of the people as well as our academia and professionals are unable to think at all, " he elaborated. It was clear my friend was agitated. He was speaking non-stop. "They want every new village, every new road, every new township named after them. That is not all. "They want to rename old villages, old roads, and old townships too after them. ..." "But this is democracy," I retorted. "It is only under doctrinaire Communism that personality cult could emerge. "What we see is not personality cult but brand imaging in marketing parlance." And we saw much image building in post-tsunami operations too. The media became a battleground for branding wars to such an extent what attracted attention was not so much the victims or the relief but brand images. Obviously a sign of our mature democracy, only a handful of doctrinaire Commies could fail to see it. - the Sceptic |
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