Walking The Dog

By now ‘Weapons of mass distraction’ (WMD) is a very commonly used phrase. Urban dictionaries define it quite accurately as politically charged non-issues used to distract those who live in a faith-based reality from the catastrophic failings of a political party, regime or ideology. Very often this means using scapegoats. I would use ‘faith’ here to mean MSM as against religion. ‘Weapons of mass distraction’ is also a movie where two filthy media moguls with the dirtiest secrets wage a war to own a football team. In their dirty battle they destroy the lives of many ordinary people. Sounds very much like our own corporations, political parties and media, doesn’t it? Even the innocent looking mobile or smart-phone is a WMD. Look around anywhere or even on TV screens, you will always find a lot people staring at their devices even when it’s not ringing or vibrating.

After Grammar specialist Ashwani Kumar and “innocent” scape-GOAT Pawan Kumar Bansal resigned on May 10 the Tiwaris and Singhvis had disappeared from the media. Fortunately for the Congress party the Pakistan elections were around and their best friends at NDTV and CNN-IBN kept their channels busy with non-stop coverage of Imran Khan and when they found time they covered the rest of Pakistan. A day earlier Barkha Dutt was already in Pakistan at the hospital where Imran Khan was being treated and, with Musharraf in jail too, she found the only interesting person in Pakistan to interview was one Aleema Khan. This Aleema is the sister of Imran. This was a lot like the Priyanka Gandhi interview of April 2009 except in more tragic circumstances. This art of distraction is also called “Wag the dog” which means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance. By doing so, the lesser-significant event is catapulted into the limelight, drowning proper attention to what was originally the more important issue. The expression comes from the saying that 'a dog is smarter than its tail', but if the tail were smarter, then the tail would 'wag the dog'.

On Sunday, May 19 N. Srinivasan held a press conference over the latest IPL spot-fixing scam. For a scam which the media has been on and on for the last 4 days the meeting concluded in about an hour and his presser lasted longer. One reporter (probably from one our doggy channels) asked Srinivasan if legalising betting would solve the huge problem. You see, this is where the tail is smarter than the dog. Srinivasan answered the question ambiguously enough to make no sense. But it doesn’t occur to the reporter or our MSM in general that even if betting is legalised, match-fixing and spot-fixing cannot be legalised (Thanks for the wisdom, Rahul Kanwal). Both are two different things. Betting is legal in many countries, match-fixing is not. This nonsensical presser followed by Rajasthan Royals’ management stating they will file an FIR against the erring players was one more instalment of mass distraction. Let’s take a look at the chain of events.

Sreesanth and others were arrested late night on May 15. The spot-fixing incidents as claimed by Delhi police occurred on May 9 or earlier. So why did they wait till May 15 to arrest the accused especially when they had flown to different hotels away from their HQ? Interesting, eh? It so happens that on May 15 Sreesanth was sacked from the RR team by the management (see TOI report). A mere co-incidence? Okay! So on May 16 the story explodes and the Delhi PC, Neeraj Kumar, is all over the place on all channels beaming like a “dulha” on the major catch he had made (The pic is from his interview with Sunetra Choudhury on NDTV). And what does Delhi police do? Every hour they release juicy titbits to the media on how Sreesanth cried, there was a confession, there was no confession, how many bookies were involved, Dubai was involved, Pakistan was involved, Dawood was involved and blah blah. So like the box of parrots they are, our media were waiting to relay every bit of scrap being thrown at them. TimesNow even interviewed Himanshu Roy, the JCP of Mumbai who made no significant comments on the episode. Splendid!

The very next day (May 18) Himanshu Roy holds a press conference of his own in Mumbai to tell the world that they had seized a laptop computer, an ipad, and a mobile phone of Sreesanth. You know, the Delhi police went to Mumbai and arrested Sreesanth but the Mumbai police must have told them “please leave something for us”. So our very considerate Delhi police left these items for their Mumbai friends to mop up. So after the Delhi police left, the next day Mumbai police grabbed all these belongings of Sreesanth. This is truly inter-state police cooperation at its best, isn’t it? So after May 16 and 17 were dominated by the grinning Neeraj Kumar, his PR guys they said “over to Mumbai” and on May 18 Mumbai police hogged the limelight. Three days over a spot-fixing scam?

Since the spot-fixing scam goes beyond borders and indicates Hawala transactions there must be room for some more to join the fun. Enter the Enforcement Directorate! What do they say… “maan na maan me tera mehmaan”! So the ED jumps in and says they will now start a money laundering probe (Outlook). So in a couple of days you might find some ED guys on TV telling us what they are going to do, when they are going to do and how they are going to do it. That reminds me. The original IPL guy that the ED is still chasing, Lalit Modi, is happily settled in London and is on TV every time something happens in IPL. And Modi lectures everyone on the chastity of IPL when he was in charge. Talking about ED reminds me of another one. This Rajasthan Royals, the focus of all attention, was slapped a 100 crore fine by the ED for foreign exchange violations. Did they pay up? What happened to that? If you go the Telegraph article I challenge you to decipher who the owners of RR really are although the face being shown to us is that of Shilpa Shetty. There are names of so many finance companies and even Lalit Modi’s ‘jiju’ Suresh Chellaram is mentioned. All pretty complex as most IPL owners appear to be. And Shilpa Shetty says “Zero tolerance”. I believe her.

Maybe the IT and ED should first scrutinise funding of the owners of each IPL team with a fine tooth-comb before they venture into the spot-fixing scam which is of much lower value. But why should the news media be so carried away with this for over 4 days and still be going on and on about it. Surely, even if they are parrots they can’t be that dumb, can they? Or may they are wilfully so. All other issues of national interest have been pushed aside as former diplomat KC Singh laments. In the last 4 days other issues are covered only as a “break” like the Chinese PM’s visit or the resignation of two corruption-tainted ministers in Andhra Pradesh. Throughout this period there is a massive “Bharat Nirman” campaign running on all the channels. Mind you, these are not small 5-10 seconds ads, these are mostly full 90 seconds ads or even more.

The APCL (Andhra Pradesh Corruption League) has been covered up and pushed into to a corner of news items for over 4 years now. Even that “Truth V Tripe” guy didn’t have time to pay any attention to it. Propaganda channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN and lately Headlines Today simply refuse to do a complete story on the APCL. As high a minister as Home Minister Sabitha Indira Reddy and Roads & Buildings Minister D. Prasada Rao have been forced to resign because of corruption. It’s not just these two, there’s a whole team of people who are accused and I quote from The Hindu:

Other accused in the case include Jagan, V. Vijay Sai Reddy, Puneet Dalmia, Y. Srilakshmi, V.D. Rajagopal, Sajjala Diwakar Reddy, Sanjay S. Mittra, Neel Kamal Beri, Joy Deep Basu, Raghuram Cements (presently Bharati Cements), Dalmia Cement and Eswar Cements (now merged into Dalmia Cement) in that order.

The continuous coverage of the IPL spot-fixing, with mostly nothing new to add, is simply mind-boggling. I don’t believe that media houses have only now realised that the late YSR was running the most corrupt State govt in the country. The corruption loot could well match the 2G levels. Jagan Reddy, YSR’s son who is currently in jail under CBI cases, alone is reported to have acquired assets worth over 40000 crores. Amazing for a guy who had nothing much to start with! The Congress corruption in AP is not even debateable. No channel is demanding resignations and no channel is even talking about it. Even the UP Lokayukta decision to recover 1400 crores from Mayawati & Co. is blaring on all channels. Lately, NDTV is obsessed with Afghanistan. Understandable! WMD apart, someone is clearly walking the dog. I wonder who.

Fekulogy By NDTV & Headlines Today

One of the most interesting developments of the last few days of Narendra Modi speeches at multiple events is that the MSM has run out of fire. NDTV, Headlines Today, CNN-IBN found that the battle on Social Media and Twitter was far more exciting than the silly debates on their channels. Needless to say, many in the MSM were quite upset that #PappuCII had trended during and after Rahul Gandhi’s speech at CII on April 4. The Pappu trend was covered internationally and each journal and news outlet explained what the term meant. In short, RahulG as “Pappu” was being referred to as a naïve, dumb kid. Well, considering his speech and interaction at CII it wasn’t quite off the mark. Naturally, channels like NDTV and Congress supporters were thirsting for revenge and wanted desperately to similarly trend the Modi speeches in a negative fashion.

Narendra Modi’s speeches themselves were largely on expected lines. There was great oratory, facts, wit and sarcasm. It started with the women’s wing of FICCI, then an interaction at the ThinkIndia event at CNN-IBN on April 8 and then another one at Kolkata on April 9. Minutes after the Kolkata event ended, NDTV jumped for joy and reported #Feku was still trending on top. This #Feku hashtag was supposedly the Congress response to #PappuCII as our media would have you believe. So Headlines Today, NDTV and some newspaper outlets were indulging in the same predictable LIES again. Unable to come up with anything substantial against Modi’s speeches, except the usual suspects singing the 2002 song, the media was thrilled with the #Feku tag. Headlines Today reported “Congress draws first blood” in Twitter battle and then headlined “Feku trumps ModiStormsFICC”. The hashtag #ModiStormsFICCI started with a tweet by me just before the start of Modi’s speech at FICCI. It’s not clear who created the #Feku tag as everyone was using it, including Congress and BJP supporters.

Now, here’s the problem: Both #PappuCII and #ModiStormsFICCI are very clear hashtags and the reference to the person concerned is not ambiguous. In contrast, the #Feku tag is a very generic tag that can be used by anyone to target anyone but the media went around lying that the #Feku tag was created by Congress to target Modi when facts do not support such a contention. Take a look at this tweet from Pawan Durani at 3.00pm on April 8, which is just a while after the FICCI event:

Notice carefully, that all the TOP tweets at that point of time were using #Feku for Rahul Gandhi and not Modi. But yes, the Congress supporters were also using #Feku to target Modi. As a consequence of both sides using the same hashtag it became the top trend. There wasn’t any question of Congress drawing first blood or #Feku trumping #ModiStormsFICCI. If only Congress supporters had used #Feku there is hardly any doubt it would not have been the top trend. It is because the supporters of both Congress and BJP were using the tag that it became the top trend. In fact, in the later part of the day on April 8 it was the BJP supporters who had hijacked the tag and most of the tweets with #Feku were by them.

What is laughable is that TV news channels are now watching Twitter battles and that is surely a good sign for social media regardless of which political group one supports. As is the tradition with NDTV, the lies continued and in their Social Network programme on April 8 the anchor was desperately trying to suggest there was a battle between #Feku and #Pappu. That was hardly the case and as @Surnell points out, both tags were being used interchangeably as substitutes. Moreover, Pappu wasn’t used for just the CII event, RahulG is frequently referred to by that name. So once again NDTV was reporting on a battle without the slightest bit of fact-check. Well, I guess fact-check is not in their DNA when their reporting comes to Congress.

The single most tweeted and re-tweeted tweet With #ModiStormsFICCI on April 8 was one that I had posted in a sarcastic reference to RahulG’s “man on a horse” comment from CII. The CNN-IBN screen grab shows the tweet was RTd 458 times. By afternoon of April 9 the tweet was already RTd almost 600 times. So the battle between #Feku and #Pappu is a fake one that NDTV reported. To add to that Rahul Kanwal also spent an entire primetime session on the fake battle between #Feku and #ModiStormsFICCI. Kanwal was ecstatic that some Congress hashtag had beaten the other tag when that was hardly the case. A successful hashtag on Twitter usually has a direct reference to the target. #PappuCII had no ambiguity on who the beneficiary of the tag was. #ModiStormsFICCI had no ambiguity about the beneficiary. So for Rahul Kanwal to claim that #Feku had a clear target or beneficiary reflects his ignorance about Twitter and hashtags.

Neither NDTV nor Headlines Today could manage to poke any holes in Modi’s speeches. Some female media anchors and panellists were woefully picking on nonsense like women being called “Ma or behen”. Such frivolous crap is all they could come up with. In contrast, the audience at FICCI, at ThinkIndia and Kolkata were thrilled by the interaction, so were many other observers in the media. So when they couldn’t find any genuine criticism to hurl at Modi the news channels and newspapers like Indian Express turned to imaginary Congress victories on Twitter. More than Tweeple from either side it was the news channels who indulged in a lot more “Fekulogy” as I call it. But I derive immense satisfaction from the fact that the social media is now dictating the discourse to MSM. That is for everyone to celebrate, regardless of political persuasions. The MSM is already famous for “Fekulogy”, they just fell into a new trap of the art.

NaMo Mantra & IndiaToday's Shameful Conduct

Ever seen the fine print in a public contest advertisement? There is always a clause that reads somewhat like this: “The following persons are not eligible to participate in the contest: (a) employee(s) of any company in XYZ Group and close relations of such employee(s), and (b) the employee(s) of companies that provide direct sponsorship of the contest”. This is to prevent any malpractice through insider information in the contest. This clause should be applicable to some aspects of the Summits and Conclaves that our media often holds. This is where I consider the recent India Today Conclave 2013 (ITC) quite shameful in its process. If the purpose of debates and discussions in these conclaves is to bring out new ideas and thoughts then ITC is a major sham. I cannot list even one new idea it has brought forth from any of its participants, except Narendra Modi. But then Modi doesn’t need ITC to throw up ideas anyway. All that the rest of ITC does is peddle more of the same mindless crap and nobody is any wiser.

What is worse is the less than honest conduct of the event by Rahul Kanwal and Aroon Purie. Pathetic! And we’ll see why. I’m not going to discuss the scratch-my-back type discussions or the Bollywood masala that is usually part of such events. Let’s cut straight to the panel discussion on March 15. The topic was something like ‘Future of democracy and youth’. Participants were Manish Tiwari, RPN Singh, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Aaditya Thackeray, Smriti Irani and Arvind Kejriwal. All are politicians so they are on the same page. The panel discussion was fine but it’s when the Q&A session started that I had to be suspicious. Naturally, a bit later I tweeted a single word: “Fixed”. 

In a democratic debate I personally consider it a crime to bring in a communist as a questioner. The ideology of communists does not fit into the democratic philosophy at all. It’s therefore that I consider it our country’s unique misfortune that much of our media is controlled by commie ideology. But why in the world would ITC get an absolute Commie like Kavita Krishnan to ask questions of a democratic discussion. The dishonest part about ITC and Rahul Kanwal is that they passed her of as a social activist. The introduction should have clearly mentioned that the woman is a member of the CPI (ML) and therefore her contempt and disgust for Hindutva and Right-wing parties must be seen in that light. KavitaK had questions for none but Smriti Irani and Thackeray. The CPI (ML) of which KavitaK is a member of the central committee is a known supporter of violent movements, Maoists and separatists. I called it “fixed” but I’m not the only one to see the deception. There were many as this tweet of Smita Barooah shows.

True to form KavitaK peddled nonsense like suffering at the hands of YuvaSena (to Aaditya Thackeray) when such a unit did not even exist in the time period she was referring to. But well, it didn’t stop there. It started all over again after Narendra Modi finished his speech. Whether you’re a BJP supporter or not only an extreme fool will deny that NaMo is an extraordinarily inspirational speaker. He speaks extempore with facts and figures at his finger-tips. He makes sense. What was the topic? It was supposedly “Namo Mantra for India”. What should the questions relate to? What’s the job of the host or moderator? This is where both Rahul Kanwal and Aroon Purie failed miserably and conducted themselves shamelessly and most unprofessionally. (Watch the video)

In the opening para I mentioned that members of the host organisation shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the process of an event. However, considering this is not a contest this too is fine. So who is the person allowed to ask the first question to Modi? PunyaPrasun Bajpai, a guy who has recently returned to the IndiaToday group. Modi immediately asks if this is some kind of press conference and Kanwal laughs and denies and even denies there’s any “fixing”. Aha! No match fixing? So what was the BS question by Bajpai? It was about what’s holding Modi’s license to the road to Delhi. Now, does the question relate to the topic or Modi’s speech at all? Nope! So the moderator should have said “Sorry Bajpai, don’t fool around, stick to the topic”. Although Modi answered and even ridiculed the moron, the hosts should know how unprofessional and incompetent they are to allow such foolish questions which don’t even relate to the speech, topic or agenda of the conclave.

So the IT group people got to ask the most questions. Sandeep Bamzai asked another one and then the worst to come was from a moron who passes off as editor at IT. His name is Javed Ansari. What does he ask? He goes back to the 2002 riots and the apology theme. This is criminal “fixing” by Rahul Kanwal and Aroon Purie. If it wasn’t “fixed” they should have honourably disallowed the question stating it is “off topic”. If calling Modi to every event on a different topic and then allowing questions to invariably lead to the 2002 nonsense is the agenda, then it is nothing short of “fixing”. Modi was naturally forced to retort that he knew and had seen the “games” of the media many times over and is not bothered about the hidden agendas of the media insiders asking these questions.

Remember, even in the Hindustan Times Summit of 2007 Modi was called to speak on State & Centre relations. There too Rajdeep Sardesai who was the host and anchor veered from the topic to disgusting comments about Modi. Since then Modi has won more elections and grown in stature while Rajdeep has now degenerated into a full-fledged troll and hate-monger. If these morons wanted to talk about PM candidate and 2002 their topic should have read “NaMo’s PM candidature & 2002”. Was that the topic? There were many important points that Modi made in his presentation and speech that have high value and relevance for India and her future. But do these hate-mongers and gossip-mongers at IndiaToday care about India? Their questions had no relevance to the topic and the speech. They really don’t give a damn about the future of India or NaMo’s or anybody’s mantra for India. Do they? If I were to ask Rahul Kanwal or Aroon Purie how India benefited from this Conclave in a single paragraph, I guarantee you they won’t be able to answer. Because they really don’t give a damn!

I would not be wrong in considering Rahul Kanwal, Aroon Purie and Javed Ansari continuing the trend of others in the media of “fixing questions” and “planting questioners” to fuel hatred for Modi and his party, while living off the crumbs that the TRPs his presence and speeches generate. While Smriti Irani, Aaditya Thackeray and Narendra Modi came off with flying colours from the event the IndiaToday group came off a shameless “fixer”. The joke of it all is Kanwal tweets that they had invited RahulG too but he had declined. IT and other shameless media groups forget that it takes courage to do what Modi does. These same people crawl and lick the ground on which RahulG walks and catch the spit of SoniaG before it hits the ground. If they had any decency or morals left in them they would ask many questions of the Gandhis. But the cowards will not. IndiaToday’s conduct of these two episodes in the event was most unprofessional and far from honest. Shame on the whole group!

Sweat Love Story - Part 1

Each day I wake up I realise I’m totally out of sync with this tech-age; that I’m not fashionable. It’s just a few years ago I learned that PDA stood for ‘Personal Digital Assistant’. So when Sunanda Pushkar (SP) told NDTV “I don't know. I can only say it's very sad that in a country like ours that they don't believe in PDA because the point is we are a country...” I was totally flummoxed. I was wondering what a stupid PDA had to do with her defence of the ‘50Crs GF’ tag or Shashi Tharoor. Thankfully, Sunetra Chaudhary quickly clarified that SP’s PDA means “Public Display of Affection”. These things keep changing faster than I can learn. And hold on, I did go to a convent school for a few years of my primary education. You know, we were taught about cows and dogs.. as in 'domestic animals’. In some exams we even loved drawing pictures of animals. But hell, that convent never taught me what “cattle class” was. And SP insists only those who went to a convent school would understand that. I’m now wondering if it’s a good idea to ‘sue’ my school.

So this Sunanda was on all the English channels and all the ballerinas in the news channels were shocked over the 50Cr GF comment and how it was ‘sexist’ and an insult to ‘womankind’. All very nice! But it doesn’t alter the fact that 50 or 70crs of ‘sweat equity’ was the reason why Tharoor was sacked from the ministry earlier. Nothing had changed in between to bring him back. That was a question no news channel wanted to ask. Well, it’s election season in Gujarat so that part can wait. I’ve seen the Bachchan movie “Khoon Pasina” and even heard of the rock-band ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears’. Salman Khurshid explained the blood and tears part well. There was his ‘Ink & blood’ comment and then how SoniaG had ‘tears’ in her eyes over the Batla House shoot out.

However, it took the Tharoor-Sunanda duo to bring home the full understanding of ‘Sweat’. Theirs is a true love story as Tharoor indicated in his tweet-back to Narendra Modi. Like PDA this ‘sweat equity’ is also a concept that’s not very old. Start-up companies which don’t have lots of money issue equity shares to people like lawyers, marketers etc. in lieu of cash payments for their services. The shares, of course, are liquid assets like any other. But this sweat can also be misused to reward people as bribes under crony capitalism. And the best place to borrow capitalist concepts from? You guessed it – US of A! Nobody does it better. Every form of economic system or ideology has its evils; or should I say evil people? For instance govt officials handing over land or public facility to a private citizen or entity for a small price and then getting kickbacks. Or buy a piece of land dirt cheap, sweat over it with govt help and then sell it for an extraordinarily high value. I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably thinking Robert Vadra but we’ll get to him later.

In the meantime let’s remember what Swami Vivekanand or even Stephen Covey has talked about many times. Good is difficult to emulate but evil can and will always be exceeded. In other words, it’s hard to pick up good practices or habits but bad habits are usually exceeded from where they were picked up. If one is a smoker, chances are the person is probably now smoking more than the person from whom the habit was picked up. Remember September-October 2008? That’s the time many crony American companies with fake balance sheets and figures, companies with nothing but paper assets crashed. Those included AIG, Merrill Lynch and housing loan companies. While many in the public suffered, the owners or management members of these companies made a killing. The sweat love story is not very different. You’ve heard of Cash4Votes, of Cash4Questions in parliament. Here’s something similar: Kids4Cash. The story is old and also features in Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore.

In the year 2001 a private company in Pennsylvania (PA), US offered their company, PA ChildCare, to replace a county’s Juvenile Detention home and the contract of detentions outsourced to them. The two people who offered this “social service” were as Greg Zappala and attorney Robert Powell. As it happened Powell had a friend in Judge Michael Conahan who shut down the public juvenile facility since it was “run down” and stopped its funding by end 2002. In due course the contract to run the detention centre was handed over the privately run PA ChildCare of Robert Powell. That’s not all; the contract was a $58 Million per year lease. So essentially, Powell’s company built his private detention centres with public money and had an annual lease amount too. Nice, isn’t it? But, that’s not all.

Powell’s company added a sister company to the original PA ChildCare and both started operating juvenile detentions for the govt. Powell’s business of reforming of spoilt brats of PA flourished. He even bought a private jet and yacht that was ironically named “Reel Justice”. Now that the detention business was privatised, more and more kids were convicted for juvenile offences. The number of kids being sent to the detention centres grew, business grew. In a 5 year period Judge Mark Ciavarella (seemingly a partner in crime of Judge Conahan) sentenced an astonishing 6500 kids to Powell’s detention centres. You see, the more kids they sent to the juvenile centres the more the money to the private businessmen. More money to the private businessmen meant … Hmmmm! That’s the beauty!

Both Judges Conahan and Ciavarella received up to $2.6 Mn in kickbacks and bribes. It came to be known as the “Kids for Cash” scandal which broke in 2008. Both judges also didn’t report this income and didn’t pay income tax on it. The case broke just around the time financial markets were crashing in the US. Both judges were prosecuted. On February 18, 2011, following a trial, a federal jury convicted Ciavarella and the prosecutors said the former judge used children "as pawns to enrich himself." On August 11, 2011, Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison as a result of his conviction. On September 23, 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17-and-a-half years in prison as he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy. On November 4, 2011, Robert Powell was sentenced to 18 months in prison for failing to report a felony and being an accessory to tax conspiracy. Consequent to the frauds all the 6500 convictions by Ciavarella were also overturned. Read more at Juvenile Law Centre site.

There are only two things that separate the crony capitalism of the USA and India. One is that their media, probably equal with India’s in every other way, does not directly support crony capitalism. The other is the Justice system. The US justice system appears to be fair and is definitely far swifter. It is merciless on any criminal regardless of who the person or entity is. Out here, there is an outpouring of tears in the media for Rajat Gupta and he would have probably not been tried for another 25 years even. The concept of sweat equity was originally a good one. But as we keep observing, crony capitalism ensures equity and assets pass to hands without anyone running or breaking into a sweat.

Just about two years ago Sunanda Pushkar was a hounded woman with many media crooks painting her a “vamp”. Now, she is being painted a “victim”. For the media everybody is a victim where it concerns Narendra Modi. In her interviews she goes around saying “there’s no money on the table”. She even quotes from Jerry Maguire and says “show me the money”. Well you see, viewers are either idiots or didn’t attend a convent school to understand that the very reason for “sweat” equity is because the start-up doesn’t have enough cash. Question remains, why exactly was she given that equity for. There’s no evidence she had done anything for the Kochi IPL team, unless it’s a big secret. She didn’t run and break into a sweat. It must have been Kochi’s way of expressing affection. Sweat is thicker than love, it’s priceless. 

To be continued...