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Timeri N. Murari

I AM seriously considering applying for a job as a dictator. The pay is pretty good, you chose your own working hours, you get any number of freebees and you do not pay income-tax.

Of course the downside, and there is always a downside to any good job, is that you have people gunning for you. I could live with that. It could not be any worse than driving in India where the gods dice with your fate every moment you are on the road. Fortune magazine recently published its list of the world's richest people. Naturally, Mr Bill Gates tops it again with mere $40 billions. I figure this must make him richer than many nations. I skipped the names lower down, as they were loose change to Mr Bill Gates.

This time around, Fortune also published a list of the richest dictators. I am not certain how accurate their figures are but they certainly made interesting reading. I wondered whether Fortune sends out a form to the dictators, like the ones you get from credit card companies soliciting your patronage. There is always a column "Tell us about your profession and income".

Are dictators self-employed or are they employed by the State? I guess they will tick the CEO box, as it is tough getting a platinum credit card if you are self-employed.

I am sure they must ponder a long time over the income box. How will they tick those boxes? Real Estate? — the whole country. That is not chump change. Other assets? — everything in the country, dams, power stations, roads, railways, tanks, fighter jets. They would have to add an extra sheet to complete the list. Number of people employed in your company? — the whole population, including the ones in prison.

How many four wheelers? — lost count. The name of your bank and account number? Now, I wonder how they answer that. They must use, again, a separate sheet of paper to name all the banks and total up how much each bank holds.

What about the "last income tax filed" question. At this point, I figure they send in their Gestapo to deal with the stupid questioner and sling him into their private prisons. According to Fortune, President Fidel Castro is worth $110 million. My admiration for the man only increases at his moderation. He has been in power in Cuba for nearly 50 years. This works out to an annual salary of $2.2 million a year! You could not hire any CEO for that kind of small change.

The big guys in GE, GM pull in 40-50 million dollars a year, and that is not including stock options and other perks. And all they have to do is run a corporation and not a complex nation that has been living under the guns and missiles and blockades of the US. Now you may say Cuba is not exactly the richest nation in the world.

However, compare Mr Castro's fortune against the ex-President Suharto of Indonesia who stashed away $8-10 billion dollars during his relatively brief rule of the country. African "Presidents-for-life" from Mugabe downwards, have stashed away billions too, and impoverished their countries.

I watched them gather in Paris recently, dressed in their Armani suits and Dior dark glasses, looking like a bunch of gangsters. They brought in their families and chamchas in private jets, who shopped until they dropped. I am surprised that Arafat has stashed away $300 millions.

When did he get the time to make any money? More importantly, where can he spend the money? He is trapped in Gaza and cannot even buy himself a three-course meal. Admittedly, he has been around nearly as long as Castro has. So, he makes around six million dollars a year for the hardest, most thankless and impossible job in the world.

I would certainly skip that application form, if they head hunted me. There are other dictators in the Fortune list. They include Gaddafi, the Saudi ruler (billions no doubt from all that oil) and various other Arab and South American dictators.

However, what I am waiting for is for the Fortune investigation team to descend on India. They would have a field day. Mr Fidel Castro's $110 millions and Mr Arafat's $300 million would look like peanuts compared to what our democratically elected leaders have stashed away in bank vaults across the world.

Every Chief Minister of his or her State lives like a dictator. They have the same style of functioning — the armed guards, the fawning acolytes, the motorcades, the gangsters imposing the dictator's will, a compliant police force, a rubber stamp bureaucracy.

Every five years they have to stand for elections and, in many states, it is a mere formality for them to continue their rule.

In some States, a new dictator is formally elected and he or she quickly falls into the same pattern of rule as their predecessor.

The only difference between India and those other nations is that we elect our dictators and allow them to rule for five years and loot our treasury. Unfortunately, our leaders do not have the same sense of moderation as a Fidel Castro.

(Contact the writer at: tnmurari@hotmail.com)

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