IPL TAMASHA

New age India saw liberalisation of the early nineties, retail boom of the millennium and now the baap of all events, THE IPL in this decade. It definitely qualifies as one of the largest brands of India. So what's new about the spin offs making the headlines outside of the cricket pitches? We hate Modi already? How about a certain Mr. Raju who splashed across every readable space just a few months back? The fact is, today there are too many young, talented, well educated and affable Indian chaps in the middle of big things, some of whom find their oppurtunity for some personal action. By nature everyone wants to play the money game. Having read scores of fiction about white firangs milking millions off large corporations in the page turners churned out by the Grishams, Collins and the likes, it just seems like a real life Indian action replay. May be the beginning of it. Money laundering was traditionlly the job of the politicos of our country. Sole discretionary power was the driving factor behind it. Now power has innumerable dimentions in this age in a fast changing nation. We shouldn't be too surprised at the mushrooming brigade of the smart alecks who tweak a few knobs while in the thick of things and stash away such amounts of green bucks that most of us can only vaguely imagine.
A new season of IPL, announcement of two new franchisees, one politician Mr. Tharoor, and a pandoras box full of ugly worms opens up to a nation giddy with cricket flavour. One cannot be so naive as to think of IPL as a cricketing event alone. Cricket is the side business here. Its mostly about money, about hard core speculative investment. Team owners are tainted with black money from shadowey entities lurking in the background, more skeletons are bound to tumble out from the cupboards. There is a theory about how an individual can be positioned at the right time at the right place with the right acumen to fully leverage a given oppurtunity, some do it the right way, ala Mr. Murty of infosys, some do it their way, Modi for instance. India hurtling towards superstardome of world economy is a goldmine of millions of such oppurtunities, and the next Modi or Raju is just around the corner. We need accountability, yes.
Paid debateers in the prime time news slots are shouting hoarse about transperancy and neutral audits of IPL, but did we prescribe the same for our potbellied netas assets and incomes? How are the infamous swiss banks flush with trillions of crores?A nation crawling through post independence infancy was sucked dry every which way by the power wielding vote mongers through decades preceding the present one, and still it goes on. Audit the whole bloodsucking 'representatives of the masses lot'. Pointing fingers at one Lalit won't help. And prescribing an all pervasive political intervention certainly won't. It is possible for a nation like us to be a model of the new world with overdue streamlining processes and watertight audits. Otherwise it would be another spiralling down into the cesspool of bad market vibes and ugly public spats surrounding every other major marketing extravaganza in due course of time.
The time is now, we must act fast to lock all flood gates before its too late, when we shall witness another gereration rising to complain about a corrupt nation with a poor public/private asset management. Lets stop IPL from becoming the Indian Public Liablility.