HUM HINDUSTANI: Taming the teams –J Sri Raman

Both Pawar and Patel belong to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), an important ally and partner-in-power of the Congress in New Delhi as well as the state of Maharashtra. Critics have castigated the Congress leadership for sacrificing principle at the altar of power and avoiding any action against either

We cannot yet call it a season of show cause notices. But, in India, it is certainly already a time of threats of disciplinary actions and demands for them.

If you are trying to gauge the country’s mood anytime, you will do well to begin with cricket — the game connected so closely to other big games of power and pelf. Only one luminary linked to the most loved and lucrative of games has been served a show cause notice so far, but other actions — so say the salivating media — are on the way.

The power and pelf links of the case of the Indian Premier League (IPL) Commissioner (suspended) Lalit Modi, served a notice by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are well known. Especially so is the pelf expected to pile up soon into no less than Rs 250 billion. The high stakes involved for both sides are bound to make it a hard-fought case.

Modi has replied to the brief notice from the BCCI with a 12,000 page reply, promising a supplement of another 40,000 pages or so. A couple of forests may have to be cut down — besides the ones to make way for multinational projects after the tribal inhabitants are thrown out — before the case is settled fully and finally.

Modi’s apologists say he is being punished for making the IPL a success. It is a failure that threatens to lead to a flurry of other show cause notices from the BCCI. At the receiving end, say reports, are at least four prominent members of the Indian cricket team that has lost all but two of its games in the just concluded T20 World Cup.

A national loss in cricket, anywhere in South Asia, is a national tragedy. And a national tragedy leads to a national debate as surely as life to death. The largeness of the debate can be gauged from the fact that the latest to jump into the fray is none less than Amitabh Bachchan, whose blogs are broadcast to an eagerly awaiting audience almost every day.

To party or not to party — that is the main question to have arisen in the debate. Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni had brought it up by blaming the poor fitness of some players on the allegedly all-night IPL parties they had attended before winding their weary way to the West Indies for the T20 tourney. The Big B batted for the players, saying that the boys “cannot stay in their room and play footsie”. It is beside the point that he never came up with a similar response to the party-pooping programmes of the moral brigades of his friend Bal Thackeray.

Informed observers do not see show cause notices as inevitable in these cases. There is too much money riding on the players for such a radical BCCI action. Almost every player is a brand that, as every businessman knows, takes a lot to build.

Cut to politics. This does not demand, really, a difficult transition. From the BCCI’s case against Modi, it is only a step to the controversy over board president and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. Or to his political associate Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel. Pawar has faced more flak for keeping his two posts together than for the shooting prices of sugar under his ministry’s control. Patel found himself in some embarrassment over an alleged e-mail from his office to a junior minister over details of bids for IPL franchises.

Both Pawar and Patel belong to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), an important ally and partner-in-power of the Congress in New Delhi as well as the state of Maharashtra. Critics have castigated the Congress leadership for sacrificing principle at the altar of power and avoiding any action against either.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also been in the dock for determinedly turning a deaf ear to demands for the sacking of Telecommunications Minister A Raja from another major ally of the Congress, the DMK ruling the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Raja has been accused of involvement in a major scam in the auction and allocation of mobile licences for 2G — second generation — spectrum in 2007. Some corporate players are alleged to have then been sold the spectrum at throwaway prices, causing the state exchequer an astronomical loss. The furore over this may die down and the controversy fade away with the just concluded 3G auction rewarding the government with double the expected revenue.

It is not as if the Congress has found it easier to serve show cause notices on its own ministers. The only case where a semblance of such action was taken related to former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor — and to cricket again. The controversy over the role of Tharoor — the alleged recipient of that e-mail — in the IPL’s acquisition of a new franchise took on a new complexion when questions were raised about his class and ‘culture’ as well. His tweets had already created considerable trouble for him, especially the one about his travelling ‘cattle class’ in compliance with a directive to fly economy class alone.

Similar deviations from the dominant political culture, especially of the Congress variety, have been detected in another relatively young minister with demands for action against him too. Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has kept away from cricket but this has not prevented criticism of his ways — such as his displays of temper against media queries of a level he disdained. Ramesh, however, has reportedly received a prime ministerial reprimand for criticising the Home Ministry while on an official trip in Beijing.

It is not as though there were no inner Congress scuffles at a senior level. The most widely noticed one has been between Home Minister P Chidambaram and veteran Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh. The latter, according to Congress-watchers, has spoken for a large enough section in the party in opposing Chidambaram’s idea of answering the ultra-Left offensive underway in tribal-dominated tracts of midland India. Many see this too as yet another money game involving mining licences and multi-million investments.

The question is: can winning teams, in either cricket or politics, be produced by waving show cause notices alone? Especially when wads of currency notes have nearly replaced the willow in one of these wonderful games and the working principle of coalitions in the other?

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint