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Rabble Rousing Random Ramblings by S Jagadish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
A couple of years ago, I protested against the campaign to use public funds to get back MK Gandhi's belongings that were about to be auctioned off.
I really love watching cricket, and anyone who knows me can confirm that. I was elated about the World Cup win, and especially the manner in which it was achieved. When Ravi Shastri bellowed into the microphone that the BCCI was announcing cash awards for the players, support staff and the selectors, I felt happy that those who had contributed to the win were being rewarded by their "employer", or whoever they were contracted to. If the Sahara Group had announced a huge cash prize, they would have had to explain to their shareholders anyway.
I have a real problem though when state governments (so far, the union government is silent) bend over backwards to announce cash awards, grants of housing plots, etc. That is my money.
If the government is so keen on being seen as promoter of sport, why shouldn't there be a "National Sporting Achievements Fund" like the "Prime Minister's Relief Fund"? All individuals and groups who are interested in felicitating individuals and teams who excel in various sports can send in their contributions via cheque. As and when there is an individual or team achievement that merits an award, a portion of the fund is used as a reward.
Why can't the money be pooled in and used to construct good quality playgrounds where the a 10 year old, who has just been majorly inspired by the win, can go and play?
As governments get into the realm of competitive largesse, you have to roll on the floor laughing when the Karnataka government, in a moment of extreme philanthrophy, announces residential plots for all the players. This, when not a single member of the squad is from Karnataka, and the only remote connection that the players have with Karnataka cricket is that Zaheer & Virat will be turning out for Royal Challengers, Bangalore in the 2011 edition of the IPL.
Labels: 2011 world cup, competitive, competitive largesse, cricket, largesse, not with my money, symbolism
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For your own sake, wake up and fight back, Pakistan
I've never been a fan of over-emphasizing the power of sport, despite being a fan of several sports & sports teams. Hence, we need to see the terrorist attack in Lahore on the Sri Lankan cricket team's bus in perspective, as a diplomatic & political issue to be handled between the governments of those two countries and more importantly, as a display of what the terrorists can do, or are allowed to do. The focus should not be on the cricketers being targets. Those in the bus could well have been bob-sledding players, for all the terrorists cared. Indeed, it is likely that those behind the attack picked the Sri Lankan team "because they were there", to use a quote that George Mallory allegedly used. The purpose was to demonstrate an ability to attack at will. We don't yet (and probably never will) know who was behind the attacks.
Yet, when Pakistan sneezes, India catches a cold. When an event of this nature occurs, the implications are larger. For years, Pakistan's political, diplomatic & cricketing establishments have been saying that cricket will never be targetted by terrorists (as if it is acceptable that the target is something else!). When there was debate on India's tour of Pakistan in 2004, I wrote
India's refusal to tour Pakistan because of political considerations and terrorism in J & K absolutely baffles me. It allows Pakistan to accuse India of mixing sports with politics. India's official stance against playing in Pakistan should be that it cannot risk sending its players and citizens to a place where there is a VERY big threat perception. With Ganguly and Tendulkar being targetted by the Lashkar-e-toiba for kidnap, who is to say they wouldn't strike in "home" territory? I know there're sceptics among you who say. 'Ganguly le le, Kashmir de de' or even rejoice at the fact that the allegedly non-playing captain's absence finally offers scope for Yuvraj/Kaif to play or India playing an extra bowler. Thats rather frivolous.Last December, after the Indian government announced that India's tour of Pakistan in 2009 was off, I wrote
The point is that we should not tour Pakistan. Purely for security reasons. Nothing else.
In my opinion, the Indian government's decision is right, for the simple reason that India's cricketers would be sitting ducks in Pakistan given the huge potential for terrorist groups there to seek revenge for being banned. I know a lot of folks would say this robs fans of the chance to follow an eagerly awaited series, but that is secondary. The safety and security of cricketers should be the priority.To me, there is no difference between a Sri Lankan cricketer's life and an Indian cricketer's life, or indeed a Pakistani cricketer's life ... or indeed any life (cricketer or not!). Pakistani security personnel died while fighting the terrorists. Ehsan Raza, the reserve umpire for the Pakistan-Sri Lanka test at Lahore is seriously injured. Had India toured Pakistan, it is likely that the attack would have happened much earlier, rather than until three days to go before the series ended. India's government evidently believed that its citizens' lives were significantly threatened in Pakistan. Sri Lanka's government did not think so, for whatever reasons.
Yet, the very fact that an apolitical group became a target means that Pakistan needs to seriously introspect on what it wants to be a decade, 25 years or 50 years later. I use the word "Pakistan" in a narrow sense, and exclude its politicians, government, intelligence, defence & strategic establishments from the list. I refer to the aam aadmi. Do they want to be a failed state in 5 years time? Do they want their country to be seen as the source of global terrorism? Do they want to live in denial of the bare facts - that their government & related establishments (defence & intelligence) have pursued terror as an instrument of policy since independence, that the government has no control over nearly half the country, that the economy is in shambles even as political one-upmanship threatens to destroy "democracy"? The result of these policies is very evident from the situation Pakistan finds itself in.
Pakistanis missed a great opportunity to carry out a clean-up and produce a new generation of leaders after Benazir Bhutto's assassination like I fervently hoped.
Although her death is a sad event and condemnable, in a warped sense, I hope this is the beginning of a clean-up of Pakistan's political system. The country desperately needs a new generation of leaders.Bleating that "Pakistan is a victim of terrorism" is just plain nonsense, when the truth is that "Pakistan is a victim of terrorism that it actively fomented".
Pakistanis deserve much better. Wake up, smell the coffee and fight back, Pakistan! Not for India's sake or the world's sake. For your own sake!
Labels: cricket, pakistan, sports, sri lanka, terrorism
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Indian team sponsor rights awarded
Crossposted at Cricket 24x7
With the previous administration in the BCCI rattled by the controversy over TV rights, leading some administrators to wonder about a BCCI channel, the new administration decided to adopt some transparency. The team sponsor rights were awarded to Air Sahara for a whopping Rs. 313.8 crores for a period of four years. The rights do not include ICC organized tournaments such as the World Cup, Super Series or the Champions Trophy. The Sahara Group has been sponsoring the Indian men's team for the last few years and earlier this year they started sponsoring the women's side as well. I assume this means they can brand the team as the 'Air Sahara Indian team' in their communication.
Statutory warning: To be taken with a pinch of salt ... and more!
While the BCCI claims that Air Sahara's bid was the highest, sources inform me that the airline formerly known as Indian Airlines was the highest bidder. But it suddenly dawned on the honchos that naming the team the Indian Indian team would have looked totally dumb. Hence the decision to go with Air Sahara.
As a result, Indian's (ooh! I hate that name!) rebranding exercise seems to have fallen flat on its face. It now becomes plainly obvious that the brand management consultant who came up with that name took the airlines management, the Civil Aviation Ministry for a huge ride, on their own "premier domestic" airline.
Or so I thought, until I realized that there was another aspect to it. It seems to be a master plan by the consultant, the management and the ministry to subtly carry out an ambush marketing strategy unparallelled, even better than Pepsi's "Nothing official about it" potshot at Coca Cola in the 1996 World Cup. The cricket team would implicitly be portraying their brand name all the time. In fact, it wouldn't be restricted merely to the cricket team. Hockey teams, football teams, Institutes of Technology, Institutes of Management, Institutes of Planning and Management (*chuckle*), newspapers ... the list goes on. Everyone of those would now sport the airline's new name. Lorries plying on the country's highways would say 'Be Indian, buy Indian', regardless of the fact that the chap following the lorry would barely have three thousand rupees in his bank account. It's fame and brand would spread and stop at nothing but world domination. Embassies and High Commissions (and their staff) would be brand ambassadors. I'm sure they're miffed that George Bush's cat is called India and not Indian!
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Humour
Having been through this recently, I could empathise.
Cricket
Stuart MacGill's decision to not tour Zimbabwe with the rest of the Australian squad is perhaps one of the first instances of a cricketer taking a stand on a moral issue. Previously cricketers have refrained from touring other countries, when a whole bunch of Kiwis refused to tour Pakistan last year or the likes of Croft (Robert, not Colin!) & Caddick refusing to tour India, citing security reasons. It shows that MacGill is one of the few cricketers who seems intelligent enough to have a viewpoint on the issue and go by his judgement. In contrast, many of his teammates are okay with touring Zimbabwe because they see themselves as cricketers and thus do not want to have anything to do with politics. Obviously they believe that sport is sport and politics is politics and the twain shall never meet, to paraphrase Kipling. As I've pointed out so many months ago here, nothing could be further from the truth. Sport has always been used as a means of enforcing a political viewpoint, whether it is to boycott a country or whether it is to (re)establish diplomatic relations. So how can the two be looked at in isolation?
It seems to me that very few cricketers nowadays seldom have a well-formed or educated opinion or seem intelligent enough to realize what is going on in the world beyond the boundary. Perhaps, they really ought to read CLR James or do any other sort of reading which opens up their minds. They should take positions on issues of importance, whether it is in improving the state of pitches or how to streamline domestic cricket or whether it is right to tour Pakistan etc. I think they're quite happy doing the playing and letting the media make its own judgement.
In case you're wondering whether this stance of mine contradicts my earlier positions on England refusing to tour Zimbabwe, I'd still say there's no contradiction. England is well within its rights to refuse to tour Zimbabwe on political, security or moral grounds. However the ECB forfeited the right to take a moral stand when it promised to tour Zimbabwe if Zimbabwe toured England last year. Mind you, this is the same Zimbabwe with who England refused to have any truck with and in fact forfeited its game in the World Cup at Harare. For monetary reasons, the ECB convinced the ZCU into sending Zimbabwe to England. Yet, when it comes to the ZCU making money, the ECB gets squirmy about playing in Zimbabwe?
Politics
CBS is copping a lot of flak for its investigative show aired yesterday about Princess Diana's death.
S Gurumurthy has a REALLY LONG rant on Sonia Gandhi becoming PM being a national disaster.
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