IPL – RAT Race?

Before the ICC 20-20 World Cup began in England last year, Cricket Analysts were predicting India to be one of the strong contenders. The reason they cited was India was the defending champion and the experience in IPL. The first reason sounds logical, but the reasoning with respect to IPL experience is not convincing. The entire hullabaloo surrounding IPL may give an impression that IPL is one of the premier T20 tournaments, but deep inside it’s just a domestic league with some national and international players. And the cricket played over there can’t surely be termed as world class.

Try to get the winners of IPL to play a T20 series with an international team I’m not asking to play with Australia or South Africa or Pakistan. A T20 series with Newzealand or West Indies will surely tell the differences between an international class of cricket and IPL standards. Then how come IPL has such a fan following, revenues, and the players are so really interested that they need a separate window for this event.

The reason is pretty simple; if you are a true cricket fan a match between Australia and Bangladesh would be pretty boring given both the teams play according to their standards. But a match between Zimbabwe and Bangladesh would be really interesting as both teams play a similar standard of cricket. This is what is exactly happening in the IPL, all the teams that are not so world class competes against each other playing a similar standard of cricket.

We almost had 3 versions of the league and except for Yusuf Pathan and Ravindra Jadeja no one was really able to make a consistent international appearance. As a matter of fact the Indian selectors give a lot of importance to the runs made in other domestic tournaments like Ranji trophy, Duleep trophy, Challenger series... etc. And most of the new debutants both in ODI and in Test cricket like Abimanyu Mithun, Sudeep Tyagi, S.Badrinath and Murali Vijay have made to the national team because of their performance in other domestic tournaments and not IPL. This speaks volume about the league that claims it to be playing the most competitive T20 cricket.

The reason why this League is so famous because India is filled with lot of Cricket maniacs who can spend their useful time in watching lot of cricket and some like me writing blogs about it. And also there is Bollywood twist to it where the owners sit in the dug outs along with their team which I feel is 100% nonsense. What can a team owner sitting in a dug out can possibly do rather that getting the TV camera`s attention. Can they provide a useful tip on field placing or on which bowler to bowl in a crucial situation? Have you ever seen Owners of Man U or Chelsea sitting in their dug outs? Some owners claim they cheer the team, trust me a team owner can only add pressure rather than cheering the team. These extra curricular activities of the team owners do help to get the crowd attention and their endorsements thereby increasing revenues.

The final word is IPL is a Rat Race as some wise men said long back that, “Even if you win a Rat race you are still a Rat”. It’s a jungle out there and you need Tigers and not Rats.

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Women`s Reservation Bill – Its not about Quantity but Quality

The nation was in a furor after some of the members of the Rajya Sabha behaved in such an unruly manner. The main reason being the Women’s reservation bill, many people see this bill as a way to bring substantial amount of women in politics which by current standards is less. But the major purpose of the bill is not just to bring women in politics but to empower them to improve the standards in society.

Many comparisons are being made with Pakistan where the percentage of women in Politics better than our country. This is a useless comparison since Pakistan is not as big as our country and their political and religious way of ruling does not allow empowering women. Then why there is a big opposition in the parliament where the Congress is completely determined to pass the bill along with BJP and the communist, while RJD and SP are opposing it, the reason they cite is that this bill would support the elitist category of women and they require a separate reservation within a reservation.

But neither did anyone think that the true purpose of the bill is not to increase the number of women in parliament but to improve the standard of living. Lots of women in India mainly in rural areas undergo lot of discrimination even before their birth due to female infanticide and after their birth by mal nutrition, education, child marriage, societal beliefs … etc. This is the problem that the government should be addressing. And it’s a myth that by increasing the representation of women would completely solve the problem. Remember the women who are going to represent are not angels from sky who with a magic wand would eradicate problems, instead they are very much similar to their male counterparts, in very simple words they are also politicians.

Just by putting women in the hot seat will it solve the problem? In that Case there should be no discrimination in TamilNadu where Jayalalitha ruled for two terms. And same should be the case in Uttar Pradesh with respect to Mayawathi. Having said that there are also some women who really handle the hot seat well, the Congress leader Sonia Gandhi is a great example, the way she conducted her coalition partners like the DMK, Trinamool and even the Left parties in her previous term is note worthy. There are also some more women in Parliament who are equally capable like Sushma Swaraj, Jayathi Natarajan, Vasundara Raje.

If women’s reservation can bring more these kind of women into mainstream politics and if our political conditions allow them work towards improving living standards of women, then this bill would be a great success. But the probability of such great things to happen in Indian politics is really less. When this bill was being passed in the parliament a news anchor in an English news channel was asking a Lady MP that currently the Sons and Son in laws of politicians are contesting elections and this bill would enable daughters and Daughter in laws of politicians to contest elections. The lady MP replied that it should happen and there is no wrong in it. That’s exactly what I’m saying too there is no wrong and there will be no difference if the daughters and daughter in laws do the same thing what their male counterparts would have done. It would be just a change of gender but no change in ideology and no change in improvement of women.

My final thoughts are just by sending more women in the parliament do not serve the purpose because besides their gender they have a common politician blood running through them which always does the same thing year after year. As a common man with due respect to women I would be expecting the day when this Women’s Reservation bill would be scrapped from the Parliament. Don’t consider this as a male chauvinism, when a reservation bill gets scrapped it means that the bill had fulfilled its purpose, the purpose of providing equality and improving the status of women. And that is the day when we would reap the benefits of this historic bill, if that day doesn’t come it simply means that government has just allowed some more women to come into the parliament. Until then lets hope that this bill would be new beginning that would help to empower women across the nation.

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