With the world cup win so close and the national sentiments so high, lot of people might not like what I am going to blog about. But the fact of the matter is I went through similar emotions before writing this one.
We all loved the win and celebrated our cricketers. We turned them into national heros and icons. We have been demanding Bharat Ratna status for some and some are being moulded into religious deities. India is a land of extreme emotions but cricket takes these extremes to a new high. But the sport of cricket is also a business proposition today. There are crores riding on them. So it never surprised me when Dhoni became the largest endorsed player commanding an ad rate equivalent to top Bollywood stars or Yuvraj getting ‘Re-vitalized’ once again or for that matter some of the younger talents like Virat making crores in advertisements. What surprised me and stirred my emotions is when I started seeing our politicians doling out largess.
Last heard, BCCI announced 1 cr for each player. Fair enough, they play for BCCI and so they deserve a bonus for a sparkling performance once in a while apart from the salaries they make on every match. I can equate this to ‘healthy’ bonuses in some of our corporate parlance. No issues at all. Fully acceptable... Its a corporate body paying from their pockets... well is it? ICC just got a tax exemption for the world cup 2011. So that means they will not be paying any tax whatsoever for the enormous money they made for organizing the world cup... be it sponsorships, telecast rights, extensive and comprehensive ads placed on every nook and corner of stadiums, bats, jerseys etc...stadium charges (well we can discount that knowing that on an average it was just 20% of tickets up for sale and the remaining 80% distributed free to their families, sponsors and our ‘beloved’ politicians who by the way are still fighting on the uneven distribution of tickets because they couldn’t accommodate the ‘aunt’ of their mother-in-law’s sister into the stadium to watch the WC final...too bad)
Then came the announcements of individual states each trying to outdo the other with offers ranging from crores (A crore seems to be very common figure now) to residential plots to acres of lands to plush houses. Well who is paying for all this? A government is a representative of the people and its finances are run by tax payers’s money... yes we people ...you and I ... the one who is writing this blog and the one who is reading it now. Well who authorized them to use my money?
So on one hand... ICC doesn’t pay any taxes while on the other hand the taxes that the audience pay is used to further enhance the wealth of the cricket players.
I have no qualms or issues against the cricketers. They played brilliantly and hence deserve all the accolades. Its good to be benevolent sometimes...But shouldn’t we keep it fair? What if the money could have been used to build better sporting facilities for other sports so that a WC triumph can be replicated in other areas or may be a pace bowling cricket academy.
At least this time, I have a consolation. The last time so much tax payer’s money was used in sports was for stuffing pockets of some of the organizers of the common wealth games and that too unaccounted. At least this time, we know where its going and can still attach an emotional reason for it.
