IPL – Victim of Politics

Lalit Modi is shifting the IPL – a big money spinner to either UK or South Africa – this is the compromise formula worked out by the IPL in conjunction with the BCCI, as the various state governments where the matches were to be held have refused to provide security to the event. After working around with various permutations and combinations the IPL eventually decided to have a truncated tournament and shifted quite a few matches to Maharashtra on the assurance that security would be provided.

In the meanwhile, with the national elections round the corner, Sharad Pawar voiced his aspirations for Prime Ministership and the seat sharing formula with the Congress in Maharashtra came under pressure. Ashok Chavan who, whether you like it or not, is the proxy for Vilasrao Deshmukh who continues to do a Rabri with Ashok as Laloo did in Bihar with his wife. Also the UPA seems to be losing the ‘U’ in the acronym with various allies flexing their muscles and going their own separate ways. The unfortunate consequence of this has affected the IPL as it has fallen a victim to real politik! There is a lot of money riding on the IPL and it would by all accounts have beaten last years record in economic activity for the country. In comparison to the elections the money generated through the IPL would of course be chicken shit, if I may be allowed to say so! Though there is a cap of Rs. 2 million per candidate for the elections, it is an open secret that each candidate spends not less than Rs. 5 crores for the elections. Assuming an average of 8 candidates per seat (545 seats), we are talking of approximately 4360 candidates in the fray spending approximately Rs. 21,800 crores in toto, of which only Rs. 872 crores would be the amount to be spent legally. Mind you this is only for the Lok Sabha, the arithmetic for the Rajya Sabha would also be on similar lines. We are talking about mind boggling numbers involving illegal money being spent on getting elected. These people once elected, recover their ‘investment’ a hundred times over through various social schemes, the end object of which is to uplift the social position of those elected! Granted there are a few who would be genuine parliamentarians, but the majority are riff raff with the only ideology being to enrich oneself with tax payers’ money.

Getting back to the IPL – if the government cannot provide security on certain days for the tournament – then how can you expect the government to provide security on an ongoing basis to the 1 billion plus population of the nation. A photograph in today’s Times of India is telling – the armed guards outside the Trident are sleeping on the footpath with mosquito nets for protection – the government cannot provide for the basic comfort of security guards – and one expects these guards to act as a secure buffer against terrorists! The security for self important politicians will still continue to be ‘z’ plus or whatever they are used to at tax payer expense. For the IPL, the security will as it is be paid for, so I do not see any reason why it should be shunted out even thought the dates for the matches and the elections would not have been clashing. Come to think of it we plan to hold the Commonwealth Games in 2011, how will we provide for the security for that event, which will be much bigger than the IPL – maybe we should just shift the event to some other country.

In these times of heavy recession, we are foregoing a genuine economic activity which would have not only generated huge business but also revenue for the government. With the decision to shift it out of the country, either the UK or South Africa will benefit financially, though whether it will be as huge a success as it is in India remains to be seen. It is the millions of fans who make this event a success – unfortunately neither of the two countries are in a position to boast such a huge fan following as is available in India. As the saying goes – ‘the game must go on’ whether it is cricket or politics!