HE DOES not know it, but Babu Sassi, a fearless young man from Kerala in southern India, is the cult hero of Dubai's army of construction workers.

Known as the "Indian on the top of the world", Mr Sassi is the crane operator at the world's tallest building — the 819-metre Burj Dubai. His office, the cramped crane cab perched on top of the Burj, is also his home — apparently it takes too long to come down to the ground each day to make it worthwhile.

Stories about his daily dalliance with death are discussed in revered terms by Dubai's workers. Some say he has been up there for more than a year, others whisper that he's paid 30,000 dirhams ($A12,500) a month compared with the average wage of 800 dirhams a month. All agree he's worth it. One chat room post said: "(Sassi) must be a real expert at cranes or totally insane."

A similar debate about the boundary between genius and danger is going on around the Burj itself and Dubai's real estate boom.

For the past 10 years, Dubai's implementation of the world's biggest and most ambitious building program has stunned everyone.

Questions about how it is financed have been brushed aside. Dubai's extravagance has reached new levels: from its vast terminal 3 at the international airport, which will be redundant when the bigger Jebel Ali airport is built in 2015, to the $US20 million ($A30.5 million) launch party of the Atlantis Hotel two weeks ago.

But in recent weeks the cracks have become undeniable. Property prices have slumped, demand has dried up and, for the first time, the emirate is being forced to consider calling a halt to its expansion.

Some analysts are claiming that Dubai could implode, weighed down under a pile of debt and, given that it has relatively small oil reserves, no obvious way of paying for it.

One said: "This has been the most spectacular spending mission on earth. But it's a mirage. If complex debt structures have brought the financial world to its knees, Dubai is the world's biggest toxic time bomb."

Last week, Dubai's authorities scrambled to address the speculation by unveiling for the first time details about its financial position.

Mohammed Ali Alabbar, a member of Dubai's executive council and chairman of Emaar Properties, which owns the Burj Dubai, said the emirate's borrowings amounted to $US80 billion against assets of about $US350 billion. He said: "The Government can and will meet all its obligations."

The most dramatic development was the announcement of the United Arab Emirates' bail-out of its banking sector complete with a cash injection from the Abu Dhabi-based Federal Government.

Anthony Harris, former British ambassador to the UAE, who now works for the insurance subsidiary of Robert Fleming in Dubai, said: "The property market might have a wobble but, in the long term, the demand from Asia is huge. There are some strong pillars to Dubai's economy."

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