Winners and losers

VERNACULAR VIEWS

The past few days, Saddam Hussein and Rahul Dravid have shared headlines in the Hindi heartland's papers, as they have in much of the rest of the country.

The day before the historic test win, both mainline papers "" Dainik Bhaskar and Dainik Jagran "" had stories on the front page on how close the victory was. And since the past fortnight has been a heavily political one, with four Assembly elections, each paper has tried to find some special angles to differentiate its product.

Dainik Bhaskar, for instance, came up with the theory that, since the CBI didn't hack into Ajit Jogi's son Amit's email account, the BJP used professional hackers to do their job "" that's how they knew Jogi's son was involved in the Judeo trap.

Not to be outdone, Dainik Jagran had a cute story on how Sheila Dikshit had six ministers in her Cabinet, but they took their oath in four different languages.

Saddam's capture, of course, was the week's major news, and Bhaskar scored big. On the day of the capture, they devoted the full back page to a photo-gallery of Saddam's rise and fall, including the memorable picture of his statue being pulled down.

There was a story on how he'd kept in regular touch with one of his wives, Sameera, through phone and email right through his captivity, and a story on how the UK had said it did not favour a death sentence for Saddam.

A boxed item of his excerpted questions/replies had the questions everyone wanted answers for "" did you have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and if you didn't, why didn't you allow the inspectors to do their job? While the answers were predictable "" Saddam said he didn't have WMDs, but didn't want the inspectors prying "" these are questions that will continue to be raised several times during his trial.

Bhaskar had an interesting story, which got buried due to the heavy news content of the past fortnight, on how even cosmetics have a use-by date, though most cosmetic firms in India sell stuff long expired.

East: Saddam Hussein and the Indian cricket team's exploits in Australia vied with each other for space on the front pages of Bangla newspapers as well. The news of Saddam's capture broke last Sunday evening.

The Bangla papers on Monday splashed the Saddam story with picture and other details on the front page. Sourav Ganguly and his team lost out to the Iraqi leader, only to bounce back on Wednesday morning, when they captured almost the entire front page.

Editorial comments on the capture of Saddam, however, were more balanced. All of them criticised the manner in which the US authorities did not grant Saddam the basic rights of privacy that a prisoner is entitled to. Bartaman warned that such actions did not bode well for global peace as they could increase the Arab world's antipathy towards the US.

Ananda Bazar Patrika focused on West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya's speech at the national conference of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the trade union arm of CPI-M, at Chennai. Bhattacharya announced that he had not taken away his government employees' right to agitate or strike work.

The announcement was greeted by the assembled CITU members and its significance was not lost on an audience that was acutely conscious of how the Tamil Nadu state government had deprived its employees of the right to a strike.

The West Bengal government's decision to ban Taslima Nasreen's book, Dwikhandita, continued to evoke reactions from different sections of society.

Aajkaal ran a detailed interview with noted Bengali novelist, Sunil Gangopadhyay, on why he supported the government's decision to ban Taslima's book. It remains to be seen if Taslima would be interviewed by some other Bangla newspaper to answer some of the points made by Gangopadhyay about her writings.

South: The BJP's victory and the reign of "women power" in the three states "" Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi "" took the centrestage in Andhra Pradesh's print media.

The three major vernacular dailies, Eenadu, Vaartha and Andhra Jyothi, not only dedicated their first page to the three triumphant women chief ministers "" Uma Bharti, Vasundhara Raje and Sheila Dikshit "" but also gave them an honourable mention in the edit page.

While Eenadu was full of praises for the BJP for shedding its "Hindutva" tag and focusing on the lack of development in the states, Vaartha opined that not only had the BJP succeeded in marginalising the issues raised by the Congress and the Left parties, it went on to bag three states in the elections.

Andhra Jyothi, on the other hand, said that the defeat of the Congress is a clear indication that people are not willing to accept the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and that the Congress does not have a future until it finds a new leader.

Chhattisgarh's former chief minister Ajit Jogi, too, found a prominent place on the first page, thanks to the audio tapes alleging that he offered money to a BJP leader to make a breakaway in the BJP legislative party. All the vernacular dailies are now speculating, through news stories, that elections for the Lok Sabha are likely to be advanced in view of the BJP's landslide victory.