The world Cup Bonus - is it fair?

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.

Slumdogs meet politicians

I usually refrain from writing blogs on politics but this one forced me to abandon the rule. Recently Congress claimed credit for some of the country's recent achievements which included guess what “Slumdog Millionaire's success at Oscars”. The party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said "All this has been possible because of the conducive environment and good governance of the UPA”.

Wow.. what a statement? Isn’t this a laughing matter? To top it, the two kids from slums who acted in the movie (Rubina and Azhar) met Sonia Gandhi at her house in Janpath and also sang "Jai Ho" for her (which incidentally is Congress's election anthem now). They even suggested campaigning for Congress party in the coming elections (by the way they both are single digit old else Congress would have made them candidates from their slum constituency). Just before meeting Sonia, the two kids just had a small request “When we meet her we will tell her that we need a roof over our heads”

This last request from the two little ones is enough to summarize the irony of the situation, the sorry state of our political affairs? After 60 years into independence, the slums are only increasing; in fact so big, that a hollywood producer depicts them in full nakedness to the whole world and wins credits left right and center. The party who was providing their “good governance” for most of these 60 years claims credit for it – I guess credit for glorifying India’s poverty and highlighting the majority of population who struggle to make even their basic necessities meet. Yes Sir, this is definitely a “conducive environment”

There was so much criticism when the movie went on to win Oscars. Why hasn’t no one come forward now? Everyday, the two kids meet some political leader or some bollywood star or do a ramp walk on a fashion show (yes they walked on the ramp as well in designer clothes) but at the end of the day, they still come back to their same old slum wherein they share their parched hutment with so many others in poor unhygienic conditions. Imagine the mental trauma those two might be going through everyday? At such a tiny age, they are living a dual life every 12 hrs (a dream life in a day and dropping to the stark realties in night) hoping that the political parties will do something to rectify the situation, something that can make their dreams last a bit longer.