The Fake Cup Runneth Over...

On Times Now last night and even in the newspapers today there’s been much discussion on the Cricket World Cup given to the Indian team. Apparently, they were given a replica which they would have got to retain in the country. The TOI even has a headline today that states “…breathe easy, Team India got the right cup”. Absolutely wrong!

In most of the discussions on TimesNow the panelists talked about customs duty, goof up by either the ICC or the BCCI and so on. All of them, I repeat all of them, missed out on the most important aspect of a Trophy. That is, it passes on from one champion to another, or a champion gets to retain it by winning it. This cricket cup is not that old and does not have a long history. But in years to come the gross injustice and the stupidity of both the ICC and the BCCI will be painful.

Imagine you won Wimbledon this year. What cup would you like to hold and kiss? The replica that you can retain? Absolutely not. There is a sense of history. You want to hold and kiss the same cup that a Borg or a McEnroe or a Federer once held up. You want to belong to that league of champions who have held that cup with pride. You want to touch the same cup that a Zidane or Ronaldo had once held in their hands. This is the most important aspect and reason why the winners deserve the original trophy after a win and for the ceremony. Post event the replica is handed over.

The Indian team deserved to hold the same trophy that Ricky Ponting held up in 2003. The cricket cup has changed often. Else, Tendulkar and Dhoni would have liked to hold and kiss the same cup that Kapil Dev once held in his hands, as Clive Lloyd did. Sporting events have a touch of history and the emotional feeling of holding something that once belonged to a great champion or team is a spiritual high. There is surely a reason why boots, shirts or equipment belonging to champions fetch high prices in auctions or are preserved in museums. These simple facts seem to be lost on both the ICC and the BCCI.

It is typical of both the ICC and BCCI, full of non-playing idiots that run those bodies, that they are incapable of understanding sporting events and what a trophy really means. You would be happy if your kid were to ever be part of a world cup winning team. Ask yourself what cup would your kid like to hold? He would surely like to hold a cup that Tendulkar and Dhoni once held in their hands. You want to belong to that league of champions. No, but your kid will hold some stupid replica which you can buy any day on the streets of Jaipur.

The twisted logic used to explain the mishap, by both the ICC and the BCCI is simply shameful. But even more surprising is that the media harps on silly issues like customs duty and goof ups and overlooks real the sense of history that a cup has attached to it. Without getting a hand on the original after winning the event, the replica will only have the value of a fake. 

Fanfare For The Common Man

Finally! Something to cheer about for the common man. After months and months of muck, scams by politicians, businessmen and the media the Indian victory in the Cricket world cup is a bright and spectacular achievement. One can anticipate the media will drool over this for days to come but what a relief not to see filthy politicians from different ends of the spectrum trading blows on your screen for at least a week or so.

There is a great change from the scenes on June 25, 1983. People were out all night then too in celebration. I particularly remember a shirtless spectator escorting Andy Roberts from the middle to the pavilion when he was out. This was played out on the streets by many fans celebrating through the night where I was. Back then the celebrating crowd was mostly made up of teenagers and above. In 2011 the crowd included juniors as young as 5 or 6. Such is the tremendous impact the exposure to cricket has had. In comparison there were also more cars honking this time.

Should there be changes in the future? Yes! We surely don’t need a world cup lasting 42 days. That is absolute nonsense. For a tournament comprising 14 teams (at least 6 of which are not really regular teams) this could be done within three weeks, or even less,  instead. The greatest things come in short bursts. For one, even the real world cup, the football world cup, used to be done in 15 days till the early 1990s till the full commercialisation started. The number of teams in the FIFA world cup went up from 24 to 32. Still for a game that is played across the globe the FIFA cup still finishes in a month or less. There is no sense in 42 days of cricket world cup.

The only thing I do feel bad about is our Indian team receiving the cup from someone like Sharad Pawar. I cannot speak for the team but surely they deserved to receive it from someone really great instead of a petty politician whose integrity has always been in question. Maybe even Clive Lloyd, who was present there, would have been a better presenter.

The flowers from the celebration have not yet withered. And today we are already back to the 2G hearings by the PAC. CBI being accused of a bad job and, of course, elections. And most of all there is some controversy on the Cup received by the Indian team being a replica. We are back in business already.

Life goes on!

India Undone

I am an admirer of Gurcharan Das’ writings. A marketing expert, a good journalist and an insightful writer. Sometime around 2000 I read his wonderful book ‘India Unbound’ about India’s journey from political independence in 1947 to economic liberation in 1991. The book was written nine years after the economic reforms were started by the Narasimha Rao government. Of course, the Congress and the media have connived to deprive Rao of any credit and continue to tout current PM Manmohan Singh as the architect of reforms. This lie continues to be perpetrated by the media. Gurcharan Das’ book is quite a must read to understand how people of an entrepreneurial nation were shackled by communist tendencies and the licence Raj. The book is a journey of frustration, hope, inspiration and aspirations of a nation. Indians were just about turning the corner.

India Unbound

If one goes back to 1991 it was just about the time when new TV channels, newspapers and magazines started coming into the market, followed by the internet and dot com boom. Coke and Pepsi were back. Star TV, Zee TV were among the first to hog your TV. Since then we now have well over 300 channels, national, regional and local. Even the local cablewallahs ran their own channels. These are just a few examples. Hope floated for millions. IT industry opened up the global age for Indians and talk of India becoming a super-power was being touted. A few years prior to 1991 the Telecom revolution was the first to touch the lives of Indians in every corner of the country. That was a singularly great accomplishment.

Twenty years since the reforms began it now seems that the reforms haven’t dynamically changed lives for most of our common men, women and children. It is hard not to deny that the reforms have led to nothing but crony capitalism. Population explosion, farmer suicides, stock market scams and corruption are the items that make the most headlines. If not these, then it’s the obsession with Cricket and Bollywood though these aren’t harmful in anyway.

The new century is dominated by two significant traits – the sacrifice of ethics and a culture of greed. We have people in politics, business and the media who constantly claim to love India and yet do everything that is anti-Indian. The PM, the leader of the nation, is seen as a wimp who will tolerate anything to merely survive in office. We have an extra-constitutional office called ‘Chairperson of the UPA’ with enormous powers and absolutely no constitutional responsibility.  In the face of dying farmers we have had campaigns like ‘India Shining’ and now in the face of unprecedented corruption we are still running  ‘Incredible India’. The single biggest debilitating crime has to be corruption. Corruption eats away a nation, destroys patriotism, breeds terrorism and destroys the security and defence of the country. And there are media-men like Raghav Bahl who talk of ‘Superpower’ as do many others. 

The media, like Rajdeep Sardesai stated before, is under an illusion that people crave only for sensationalism, cricket and bollywood. A crumbling, deceitful and power-brokering media are sure indications of a banana republic. The number of journals or TV channels owned by politicians is on the rise, particularly in the south. Communist-style propaganda is what our media practices. And to top it all people like Rajdeep Sardesai even blame ordinary people for all the corruption.

I am reminded of a famous scene from the movie ‘The American President’, where in a crisis situation an aide tells the president how people ‘drink sand’:

Presidential aide Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox): You have a deeper love of this country than any man I've ever known. And I want to know what it says to you that in the past seven weeks, 59% of Americans have begun to question your patriotism. They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

The President (Michael Douglas): Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

That’s right, a majority of Indian people don’t know the difference Mr. Sardesai and Mr. PM. If they are constantly fed a diet of scams, masala news, false promises and a blatant disregard for the law, they will be tempted to get used to it and drink the sand. Not because it quenches their thirst, but because people in the public domain have fed them nothing else.

Some statistics are daunting. Unemployment has grown from around 6% in 1995 to around 9% in 2010 in the employable workforce. From a ranking of 66/85 in the Corruption Perception Index in 1998, India is now ranked 87/178 countries in 2010. Constantly talking about the GDP growth rate or the boom in the stock markets is the kind of ‘sand in your face’ that hides everything else. Corruption has become the staple diet of all major players in the public domain. There is nowhere for the common man to turn to. This fallen complaint box says it much better than words can.

At this current state of the nation the most important reform required is not in the economic domain. It is our justice system. A revolution is required to modernise and reform our justice system and courts. Freedom and liberty mean nothing when the judiciary has crumbled. The media and those in public life should be clamouring, campaigning and shouting from the rooftops for urgent reform and modernisation of our courts and justice system. This should be the highest priority for the government.

We will now have over a month of Cricket to put everything else on a back burner. You can rest assured our media will faithfully splurge on the big bucks of Cricket. It could also well be a much desired respite for the UPA government from all the scam and corruption charges. And at the end of the tournament we can get back to where we were. It may not be long before Gurcharan Das is forced to write a sequel to his book I referred earlier. 

This time I have chosen the title for him – ‘India Undone’!