A nation full of billionaires

So, another western conspiracy is out in the open. All the tall claims by Uncle Sam that things are horribly awry in Mugabe's Zimbabwe have proved to be as false as his constant ranting about the presence of WMDs in Saddam's Iraq.

Zimbabwe is infact the only country in the world where almost each and every citizen is a billionaire. The citizens there are so blessed with riches that their messiah president Robert Mugabe issues Fifty Billion Dollar notes for circulation in the market.

Only if all this was true. Well, unfortunately this time it seems that the US of America and its western brethern have got it right. Robert Mugabe has lost it completely and has pushed his country to the brink of one of the most disastrous economic breakdowns ever witnessed in history.

Hyperinflation unofficially stands at four million percent today in the African nation. The government is issuing 50 million dollar notes as this apparently princely sum adds up to only a single US dollar.

While, 50 gm toilet soaps are cut into 10 pieces by shopkeepers and sold in exorbitant rates, 'Herald', the state owned English newspaper costs a whopping 15 billion Zimbabwe dollars.

It is probably the only country in the world where it does not pay to be a billionaire anymore .

Bringing an Indian connection to the situation in Zimbabwe, an unidentified NRI settled in Zimbabwe once deposited a billion dollar cheque in a Madhya Pradesh temple. The temple management, over the monn, thinking that it was sitting on a pile of wealth, promptly handed over the cheque to a local bank for encashment.

To the utter dismay of the priests there, the bank informed that the cheque would translate into a mere Two Rupees in Indian currency and that the processing fee for getting the international cheque encashed would be much more than that.

As would be the case with most Indians, my concerns about Zimbabwe emanate from its rapid decline as a cricketing nation. Zimbabwe's constant improvement as a cricket team always excited me in the early nineties.

The Flowers, the Goodwins and Johnsons created a realistic hope that the ten nation weak world of cricket would get a new powerhouse and the ICC's efforts to popularise the game globally would get an impetus. But a turbulent political regime has already scripted a sudden death for the gentlemen's game in Zimbabwe.

The country's main commercial activity, farming has taken a beating due to Mugabe's controversial land reforms. Things has reached such a pass that the official mint does not have adequate paper to print notes.

The world could afford the death of a cricket team but if Mugabe's mayhem continues, we might well see the death of an entire nation this time.