Hit by the Lodha bouncer, can BCCI get back to its feet?

The decision of the Lodha committee to suspend Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) for the next two seasons and to ban Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra for life from participating in anything related to cricket has been a well directed bouncer that has hit the BCCI right on its head. Had any wise men ever reminded the BCCI of the famous adage ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ during the IPL spot fixing scandal, a lot of embarrassment could have been avoided. But when the establishment itself becomes part of the problem, there cannot be a lot of valid options left for it to take. 

The moment BCCI allowed its President to own an IPL team it invited trouble. Anyone with a little common sense would know that it is a matter of serious conflict of interest. But the then President N. Srinivasan was adamant and always tried to brazen it out whenever it was pointed out to him. His son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, for all discerning eyes, was the real authority of Chennai Super Kings and was always seen with the team, even on the ground. But when the allegations of match fixing came to light and aspersions were cast on Meiyappan, CSK claimed that he has nothing to do with the team and he was only an enthusiast. The CSK owners even made India and CSK Captain MS Dhoni to make the same claim. Now that the Lodha Committee has found Meiyappan to be involved in betting, his father-in-law’s position as Chairman of ICC has become highly untenable. The logic behind such a position is simple – N Srinivasan is the owner of India Cements that owns CSK. His son-in-law, who for all practical purposes was the owner of the team or was assigned the role of ‘Team Principal’, was found involved in betting, which by extension puts the owner of the India Cements under the scanner too. In view of the Lodha committee decision BCCI has to take action against the teams and if one of those teams is owned by the Chairman of ICC, how can BCCI take disciplinary action against it? 

During the initial phases of IPL, while the discussions on the structure and compostion of the IPL format were going on, some laws in BCCI rule book were twisted to allow the President of BCCI to own an IPL team. There were no questions asked and a group of people did this as they wished. It was highly improper for the BCCI President to own an IPL when it was the prerogative of the BCCI to make and amend rules for IPL, when it has the sole responsibility of running the show. Now that the Lodha committee has come down heavily on Srinivasan’s CSK, he is trying to distance himself and the team from Meiyappan, thereby paving a way to retain his ownership on the team when it will get back to the IPL fray after the two year suspension period. Such an act of impropriety must be stopped or else IPL and BCCI run the risk of bringing further disrepute to the game.

Opinion pieces in newspapers and blogs and discussions in social media and visual media will keep on explaining how much important it is for N Srinivasan to step down from the Chairmanship of ICC. But those who know about how the BCCI works will expect nothing forthcoming from the organisation. Here is an organisation that is accountable to none, answerable to none, an organisation that works based on the whims and fancies of the governing council, a body filled mainly with self-serving politicians and some self-obsessed businessmen, who have no particular love for the game of cricket, but only a keen mind to identify opportunities to make profit. What credibility and accountability can we expect from such an organisation?

One of the biggest anomalies in the administration of cricket in India is the existence of politicians and businessmen in the BCCI, who hold sweeping powers to control and influence the game in India. It defies common sense when we see fewer cricketers in the various committees of BCCI but many politicians of different hues in them. It is one place in India where politicians of different ideologies come together and share a great rapport. At present we have BJP’s Anurag Thakur as the Secretary of BCCI and Congressman Rajiv Shukla as the IPL Chairman. It is high time for the BCCI to bring in reforms in their bylaws to include more cricketers in the committees. Cricketers are in the knowhow of what is required for the advancement of the game. They would know more about the requirements of budding cricketers. They know the technical details of the game, about who the coaches should be, what type of pitches are needed for the new generation of cricketers to sharpen their skills and what all things are required to keep the current players fit and healthy. It is a poor argument that cricketers would not be good administrators. There are umpteen numbers of examples to prove that argument wrong. Professional sports bodies around the world had and many still have players as able administrators managing the affairs efficiently.

If one tries to find out the reason why India never sends its cricket team for Asian Games one will find that the Indian government has no say as far as the commitments of the Indian cricket teams are concerned. BCCI is the sole representative body of Indian cricket and it is an autonomous body that has no relation with the Government of India. It is a shame that cricket, the greatest national unifier, is not owned by the government or the people of India, but some independent body called BCCI that elects its members from among members of its own regional cohorts.

Contrary to the opinion that many detractors of IPL hold about it, this writer believes that IPL is inherently a good initiative for the budding cricketers of the country. By way of IPL matches, youngsters of our country are getting an avenue to rub shoulders with the best in the world - to compete with the best and to gain valuable inputs from the best. While trying to rectify the flaws in IPL, we must guard against throwing out the baby with the bathwater. BCCI must change and come clean, trouble makers must be jettisoned and people with love for the game must be given a chance to bring back the reputation of the game that it lost due to the fraudulent exploits of some unscrupulous forces. 

Image Courtesy: The Hindu

Mysterious deaths, corruption, impropriety, fake degree: BJP in a soup

As this writer wrote elsewhere, criticising the NDA government under PM Narendra Modi could be considered a grave sin by many in this country who voted for it believing the promises of ache din that the then PM candidate quite ostensibly gave. At a time when the whole country was invariably annoyed at the various corruption scandals that came up against the UPA government, Narendra Modi, a master tactician, effectively sold to the Indian people a dream of a corruption-free, nepotism-free, development-oriented government that would take India to enormous heights. To stroke the passions of the common citizen, Narendra Modi was touted as a future PM who has come up from a very humble background (at a time when the truth remains that all Indian Prime Ministers, with the exception of those from the Nehru-Gandhi clan, have all risen from humble beginnings). However one year into the office, the ruling party and the Modi government are in a soup owing to continuation of ministers with fake degrees as well as allegations of corruption and impropriety.

Of all the leaders in BJP, scandal hit first the most widely respected of them all – Sushma Swaraj. Unlike in the case of other political scandals, the media and even the opposition were very sceptical and calculated in making allegations because they knew that they were pointing their fingers at someone who has had enormous goodwill among political supporters as well as detractors. Ms. Swaraj’s extension of a helping hand to the absconder Lalit Modi in gaining travel papers to travel to Portugal for his wife’s surgery was shown as humanitarian assistance by the government and her party. While the opposition and the media alleged that what she did was an instance of grave impropriety if not illegality and a matter of conflict of interest. One fails to understand why Ms. Swaraj bypassed all governmental procedures of the External Affairs Ministry and spoke directly to Keith Vaz MP of UK to arrange travel documents to Lalit Modi. The whole government machinery was kept in dark by Ms. Swaraj, at a time when both her daughter and husband are part of Lalit Modi’s legal team. Even if for the sake of argument one accepts that Ms. Swaraj helped Modi on humanitarian grounds, as an External Affairs Minister she could have done so many other things to make use of this occasion to bring the absconder back to the country to face the charges (16 of them in total by Enforcement Directorate). She could have asked the British government to give him travel papers for one time visit to Portugal, so that he could have no other option but to return to India after the visit. Instead she allowed the British government to give him travel papers for two long years. The opposition was increasingly training their guns at Ms. Swaraj when she was dubiously saved by the bigger scandal of Vasundhra Raje helping Lalit Modi to stay in UK.

During their investigation on the Lalit Gate, media dug out evidence suggesting that Vasundhra Raje Scindia, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, had furtively filed an affidavit in an UK court in 2011 favouring Lalit Modi’s immigration application in the UK when she was the Leader of Opposition in Rajasthan Assembly. What made the case more curious was that in the affidavit Ms. Raje had requested the UK court not to make her affidavit known to Indian authorities. Simultaneously the media had also found out that Lalit Modi had diverted some funds from one of his bogus companies in Mauritius to the company owned and run by Dushyant Singh, son of Ms. Raje. This was being considered by many legal experts as a matter of money laundering.

When the BJP was thus engulfed in such scams related to Lalit Modi, it got another blow from a Delhi court as it took cognisance of a complaint that HRD Minister Smriti Irani had given false information about her educational qualification to the Election Commission of India. In many interventions during social media discussions this writer had made the point that it is a matter of absolute shame that India has an Education minister who has faked her education degree. Though the minister as well as her many supporters kept on claiming that one should judge her only by her work and not by her college degrees, what many failed to accept is the fact that it is not the degree or the lack of it that is the major issue, but that she lied on it that should bring out outrage in the country.

The emergence of Vyapam Scam in the state of Madhya Pradesh has shocked the conscience of the nation. Mysterious deaths of 47 persons associated with this scam made news, while the Chief Minister of MP, Shivraj Singh Chauhan of BJP, against whom there are allegation of complicity, claimed innocence. During the initial phase of the scam, where there was calls to transfer the case to CBI, the BJP government in the state resisted it. But when petitions were filed in the Supreme Court, asking for its intervention in transferring the case to CBI, BJP changed their official position and proclaimed that they are ready for it if SC asks them to do so. Like the rest of the nation, SC was also unnerved by the magnitude and enormity of this scandal. The apex court also issued notices on a plea to prosecute MP Governor Ram Naresh Yadav for his alleged complicity in the scam. Even when Mr. Yadav has been named in the FIR, the central government doesn’t think it important to remove him. When BJP was quick to remove many Governors appointed by the erstwhile UPA, it smacks of dubious intent when we find that BJP is quite reluctant to remove the MP Governor, when he is also someone appointed by the UPA government.

At a time when BJP is embroiled in controversy after controversy or ‘scam-a-day’ as the social media likes to call it, what is most conspicuous is the studied silence of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Someone who gained a name as the most eloquent of all political leaders in present day India, Mr. Modi has surprised both his supporters and detractors equally with his silence on these issues facing the nation. At the same time he still goes on merrily in social media by congratulating even many insignificant nations of the world on their independence days, wishing birthdays to many world leaders, sometimes in their own languages and speaking voraciously on many of his pet schemes in his monthly ‘Mann ki Baat’ on Indian radio. Mr. Modi had in the past made fun of Manmohan Singh’s silence by calling him ‘Maunmohan’ Singh, but when he came to power he is closely following his predecessor’s footstep as far as remaining silent on national issues is concerned. By not giving out his ‘mann ki baat’ on national issues he is increasingly losing his sheen as a decisive leader. His blistering eloquence has made way to deafening silence, his defiant rhetoric to uneasy quietude. Now the nation knows that his electoral promise of zero-tolerance to corruption was no more than a gimmick to fool the people and garner their votes.

Political analysts are also remarking that all the corruption and impropriety charges have come up against Narendra Modi’s political rivals in the party, save Smriti Irani, who is a Modi loyalist. So it could well be a ploy hatched by the Modi-gang in the party to politically thwart his critics and buy their silence. Even if it is so, with the emerging facts about large scale corruption and impropriety in the central government and other BJP ruled states, PM Modi’s and his party’s image has received a serious dent, rectifying which would be quite a difficult task.

Image Courtesy: Cartoon 'Politickle' by Manjul