New Delhi, April 01: The V K Shunglu committee probing the CWG scam has criticised the Organising Committee (OC) for paying Rs 5.4 crore A R Rahman, the Oscar award-winning composer, for delivering a ‘dud’ opening ceremony song.
“The expenditure on A R Rahman in this case appeared to be a case of white elephant. There was no safeguard in the contract for any remedy to the OC if the expectation from the vendor was not met,” the committee says in its fifth report pertaining to the functioning of the OC headed by Suresh Kalmadi, Congress MP.
Rahman’s ‘dud’ song has no recall value in comparison to the immensely popular ‘Waka Waka’, the theme song for the Football World Cup held in South Africa. Making this comparison, the committee says: “The rationale that ‘with the opening ceremony having a global audience of 2 billion people, the theme song will reach out to people all over the world’ could only be possible perhaps in terms of audience size.
However, the impact to be created by the theme song was not apparent from the response from the press and media. There was no recall value for the theme song as was (not) the case for the Football World Cup theme song.”
Interestingly, the initial quote sent by Rahman for the song was Rs 15.26 crore!
However, the OC negotiated it to Rs 5.4 crore.
“A proposal was received from A R Rahman on 12th February 2010 quoting Rs 15.26 crore for this purpose. It was informed in the above mentioned agenda note that the chairman OC negotiated the price quoted by Rahman and on that basis a revised proposal was received from him on 3rd March 2010 for a cost of Rs 5.04 crore excluding taxes.”
–Agencies