Burn the orchard,re-grow cricket

P Sainath in The Hindu

Getting Mr. Srinivasan to walk the plank is desirable, but won’t rescue Indian cricket. Scrap the BCCI, whole hog, and start over

Isn’t it reassuring to learn how many men of character the Board of Control for Cricket in India has? With the secretary and the treasurer resigning their posts, joined by the IPL chairman as well, and more lining up to quit on noble principle? Conscience crawls out of the mothballs by the hour.

The BCCI-Indian Premier League would love to retain what they have — minus N. Srinivasan. They’re working on an “exit formula” to toss their much reviled chief overboard. We can then witness a withdrawal of resignations amidst a celebration of principle and probity. While getting Mr. Srinivasan to walk the plank is desirable, it won’t cleanse the BCCI, the IPL, or cricket.

So now we know it wasn’t a few bad apples but a whole rotten orchard. The “just three cricketers,” defence was always dishonest. The rot engulfs the entire edifice of the IPL and the BCCI. The media have a ball-by-ball commentary going on this sordid Reality show: The Hunt for Srini’s Scalp. It’s entertaining too, with even an element of suspense. You never know who the next man in will be, with players in this game switching teams on field. And then there’s Sharad Pawar sending down googlies to himself on the sidelines. Yesterday’s Srinivasan loyalists could be the spearhead of today’s attack on him. Sanjay Jagdale, Ajay Shirke and Rajiv Shukla— who’ve just quit their BCCI posts — seem to be warming up for a bowl.

That Mr. Srinivasan should not head the BCCI (or anything involving the public interest) was apparent years ago. That is, to anyone whose perception was not modified by lucrative contracts with, or advertising revenue from, the BCCI-IPL. However, it’s crazy to believe his exit will set everything right. He will be replaced by his own recent collaborators. The kind who helped reduce a national passion to a hyper-commercial freak show. Take a bow, Pawar saheb.

The BCCI-IPL have faced serious charges for a while. For instance, from the Enforcement Directorate. Ensconced in London, the IPL’s founder is a fugitive from justice. Then came this BCCI chief whose conflict of interest was made ‘legal’ by changing the body’s rules. (Take another bow, Pawar saheb). Mr. Srinivasan owning an IPL team while heading the BCCI only now gets the attention it demanded years ago. As for Mr. Pawar, his notable achievement in UPA-I was to rack up more frequent flier miles on overseas travel in the name of Indian cricket than for agriculture.

This April, an irate Bombay High Court told the IPL crowd to pay up the amount they owed the Maharashtra police for security provided during their matches. The dues, the government of Maharashtra said, were “around Rs. 9 crore. The Bench also said the law permits government to attach the properties of the defaulters.

Forget the dues, the IPL earlier made money from the state. It got over Rs. 20 crore in entertainment tax waivers from the government of Maharashtra, the gains going to Mukesh Ambani, Vijay Mallya, Shah Rukh Khan and others in need. Until an outraged Bombay High Court ordered recovery of that money. Meanwhile, state-owned stadia are still given out to the BCCI-IPL at throwaway rates.

What does one do with the BCCI?

Dissolve it. Scrap the BCCI and start afresh. Have a public audit of this body’s activities over the past decade. The BCCI is characterised by its contempt for the public interest. By the impunity it could act with, confident of its power, corporate, political and media. Start over. Build and launch a body that is transparent and accountable. A body that runs the Indian team must be accountable to the public and the country in whose name it acts.

The IPL isn’t just about spot-fixing or betting. It is about the hyper-commercialization of a beautiful game to a point where it destroys the soul of that sport. It’s about structured sleaze and a corrupting culture. Every dodgy defence of the IPL holds aloft that catch-all excuse: commercial success. This, in their eyes, outweighs its “few flaws.” Yet, the cloud that the Sreesanths and Meiyappans have come under is no aberration. It is the standard product of such a system.

It isn’t just the BCCI brass who have suddenly spotted disaster. Take the dominant media that daily celebrates its latest exclusives on the scandals. The same media lionized the IPL, season after season. Whose pundits, with a few honourable exceptions, stuck to the defence and promotion of the IPL culture.

They even briefly went with the franchisees’ claim: “Our security was so tight, owners could not enter the dugouts. Bookies had no chance of being there.” They didn’t need to be. The paid-entry late-night parties were a cosy access zone for fixers, bookies and worse.

Sure, the media’s pressure at this point is a very good thing. But almost every exposé of fixing, betting or dubious deals has come from official agencies. From the Delhi and Mumbai police, from the Enforcement Directorate. Any good stories that came out of journalistic investigation before that were quickly brushed aside by a media revelling in the IPL culture. TV channels had many panellists — including legendary cricketers — extolling the glories of the IPL while being on its payroll. There were even former players accused in earlier fixing scandals. But the advertisers and sponsors till now delighted with this con-job, today worry that the “brand equity of the IPL has taken a beating.”

Well, Indian cricket has taken a worse beating.

The media helped build a make-believe world that allowed no serious critique of the IPL. Any criticism was met by: “Don’t let’s hurt cricket just because of a few small problems here.” Such words falsely conflate the interests of the IPL with those of Indian cricket. Their interests are worlds apart.

What has been the IPL’s contribution to Indian cricket?

It changed the axis, orientation, content and soul of Indian cricket. It privatised a national passion, promoted a corrupting commerce. The game is now “owned” by companies, corporate sharks and their political patrons, film stars, advertisers and sponsors. No longer by the cricketing public.

The domestic circuit that was the feeder system for India’s international teams is hurting. The Indian greats came up through it. But now it is the feeder for the IPL. Why play in the Ranji Trophy (except to get noticed by the recruiters) when you can make millions playing sub-standard cricket in the League? The IPL has not contributed a single great player to Indian cricket.

The “few rotten apples” line was always a fraud. And we need to do what orchardists do on rare occasions. Burn the orchard and plant for fresh growth. Scrap the BCCI and start over. Re-grow cricket.

Sticking with those analogies, what happens to the waste you have to get rid of? The net is full of websites running advice on that. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has some suggestions, for instance. Including “burning, chipping, shredding, grinding, composting or use as hog fuel.” Isn’t that tempting?

Three idiots and a scam that won’t die

Pritish Nandy

Always watch out for 'The Big Obsessive Scam' the media goes after. It often covers up a great deal more than it reveals. It also draws away our immediate attention from issues where we were about to get close to a dangerous truth or two. Poirot famously described it as a red herring, a cunning device to draw people’s attention away from real issues to focus on a non sequitur MacGuffin.


Also read - Sreesanth a modern day Valmiki

Like the MacGuffin, which Hitchcock made cult, The Big Obsessive Scam vanishes or becomes irrelevant once its purpose is over. This is what the spot fixing scam could be: Too much outrage chasing what matters so little to most of us. The evidence in hand is flimsy, so flimsy that it’s unlikely to get past the smallest court but the noise around it is so much one would think World War III has broken out.

The day news channels were chasing Gurunath Meiyappan all the way from Kodaikanal to Madurai to Mumbai to the Crime Branch at midnight, millions were happily sitting in front of their TVs watching Mumbai Indians battling Rajasthan Royals at the Eden Gardens, proving yet again that there are two Indias with their own sets of concerns and priorities. I confess I was among those watching the game, rooting for Rahul Dravid whose team lost with a ball to spare.

But this column is not about two Indias. What bothers me is the carpet bombing scam coverage that ensured there were no goodbyes for the man who with evangelical zeal exposed the sleazy underbelly of Indian politics over the past 5 years, and did his best to set it right. Worse, there was no debate over who his successor ought to be. So the Government sneaked in its own nominee, clearly to undo some of the outstanding work Vinod Rai, India’s bravest Comptroller and Auditor General did in his own low key style.

That may not be so easy though. Rai made the 153-year-old office of CAG a powerful weapon in his fight against corruption by the mightiest in the land. Till Rai came, CAG saw its job as writing long winding reports, more often than not hugely delayed, on the inefficiencies in government systems. None of those reports had the kind of impact that Rai’s reports created, especially those on 2G (revealing $38.9 billion gifted away by the Government to its cronies),  coal mining licences (involving another $34 billion loss of revenue) and the infamous Commonwealth Games that brought us so much shame. Courts intervened, including the highest court in the land; ministers landed up in jail or got shamed and sacked; investigations landed up at the Prime Minister’s door.  

Amidst all this outrage over spot fixing, Rai quietly demitted office last week. He was even more quietly replaced by someone less likely to expose the Government’s lapses.  Several other crucial issues that were being debated in the public space, like China’s incursions in Ladakh, the Vadera land deals, Muslim youth arrested and held for years on trumped up terrorist charges and now being released and, above all, the Supreme Court demanding the freeing of the CBI from the Government’s unholy clutches are now on the backburner. Even the Ranbaxy issue, where intrepid whistle blower Dinesh Thakur exposed the grave misdemeanours of one of India’s leading pharma companies and the dangers implicit in those for millions of us who buy its products, have been largely ignored. All we are left discussing are 3 idiots, a C-grade TV star, a lecherous umpire and a boastful son-in-law of the BCCI chairman, all of whom may well be crooks and fixers but must not be allowed to hijack the nation’s attention and agenda.

A father-in-law is the last person to know what his son-in-law is up to. Allowing him to stay in his holiday home in Kodaikanal is not the same as endorsing his petty vices or (as yet unsubstantiated) attempts to fix IPL matches. I may be a lone voice saying this. But I really think we are all playing into the hands of those who have much more to hide than these dolts. Srinivasan’s enemies (and heaven knows, he has far too many of them) are having a field day. But ask yourself, do you really care whether he heads the BCCI or Sharad Pawar. Or Rajiv Shukla. Frankly, my dear I don’t give a damn.

It's not about sex

Pritish Nandy
20 November 2011, 03:02 PM IST

Sex is as much a part of politics as of life. So sex scandals never bother me. You see them everywhere. Sometimes, open and brazen, as in the case of Silvio. Most times, they are sneaky and covert as in Narain Dutt Tiwari's case. But whatever they are, these sex scandals expose our own hypocrisy. Why on earth would we expect our leaders to be saints and, if not saints, celibates? Are they pursuing a profession or a religious order? If they are our representatives, they will have all our faults and foibles as well.

The truth is: People today have illicit sex all the time, and many among us have it among our own gender. No one quite knows how this promiscuity came about. Some blame popular culture. Others say, our popular culture merely mirrors the way we actually are. It's stupid to expect that our politicians will be any different from us. If they were, it will only make them worse. If you ask me, it's their sexual pursuits that make them human. Take that out and all you are left with is just greed: An obsessive greed for money and power. Grabbed, not earned.

So what bothers me is not sex. Not even sleaze. For one man's sleaze is another's pleasure. What bothers me is where many of these sexual encounters eventually lead. They seldom remain just encounters between consenting adults, as all sex ought to be, licit or illicit. They spiral down into a dark hell of depravity, violence and crime. Crime so brutal that the sexual part  of it seems like just a minor distraction.

The abduction and possible murder of Bhanwri Devi, a small town nurse who was having an affair with a minister, recently caused so much upheaval that the Rajasthan Chief Minister had to dump his entire cabinet. The Gehlot ministry was never much known for its rectitude and efficiency. But what dropped it wasn't its corruption or its ineptitude. What dropped it was a horrible story of deceit, extortion, abduction, and (in all likelihood) murder. For Bhanwri Devi, who was in the eye of the storm, is now missing and was last seen abducted by hired goons with a contract to kill. 

It's not just Bhanwri Devi. Every day you read about many such cases. The starting point may be sex. Or sexual attraction. But where it leads to is unspeakable hell. Acid attacks. Slashing. Abductions. Brutal violence. Khap incited murders. It is one endless spiral of horror with each story worse than the other. At the heart of it all is just one obsession: Sexual dominance. Power.

What disturbs me is the fact that sex, one of the most wonderful things India taught the world to celebrate, is now just another instrument of power men keep using to harass, intimidate, dominate, and commit violence on women. So girls wearing jeans are attacked outside their colleges. So are girls drinking in bars. Or out on dates. When the men accompanying them try to resist, they are stabbed, murdered. Mumbai is still reeling under the impact of the ghastly killing of two young men, Keenan and Reuben, who tried to protect their girlfriends from being molested by a bunch of local hoods. There is that horrible case of a policeman who picked up a college girl on Marine Drive where she was sitting with one of her classmates and raped her in the police chowky right there, in broad daylight.

No, it has nothing to do with sex. This is about power. Sex is only a pretext. The obsession with power leads to such disgusting, violent crime. It shows how perverse our notion of manhood is, how emasculated we are as men that we seek to prove our manhood by attacking helpless women. Or try to disempower them by idiotic laws that seek to prevent them from working in bars beyond 9 pm. As the demand for greater representation in politics from women's groups grows, so does the violence. You see it even in the virtual world these days. Women are constantly harassed, intimidated, stalked on the net.

But don't discredit sex for this. Discredit the genes that make us men believe every woman is easy game. And when she says no, she must be taught a lesson. No, it's never about sex. It's only about power. And the abuse of power is what politics is all about.