A-free-doh: Of Cricket, Media and Politics !!

Apparently, the biggest day in every Indian's life has passed. Kudos to Dhoni and team who brought the Cup home after 28 years, a matter of pride for every Indian. Now, starts the flurry of endorsements, prizes/goodies given by State governments and various cricket boards to their players. Well, nothing wrong with that eh, but you don't do that when 30 % of the population is still below the poverty-line and much worse 40% illiterate. There's apparently no money for education in budget allotments, but for cricket goodies there is. In the name of "promoting sports", which, is basically scoring political points in this cricket-crazy nation, a lot of money is being spent. It would have been better if all this money was invested at the grass-root level for promoting sports. Lack of money for promoting sports shows, when the second largest populous country in the world comes back with barely a handful of Olympic medals.

Now, with the euphoria of the World Cup victory settling down, the media seems to be looking for new "issues", and Afridi gave them just that with the "Pakistanis have a bigger heart " comment. Personally, I would care more for a house-fly sitting on my back rubbing its head than haggling over the issue.This new issue seems to be getting a lot of unwarranted attention among our "esteemed" media. Afridi is just scoring points back home which Indian authorities also do, with crassy initiatives like 'Aman ki Aasha'. Now, we can expect to see a lot of so called "experts" coming up asking if 'Aman ki Asha' was a good idea (not a very good one, when you haven't hung Kasab yet). I have only one answer for such "experts"-Jerks!! you were the ones who started it in the first place. While the UPA got away with corruption issues, when Aman-ki-Asha was re-ignited (well, thats a different issue, more on that later), the media gets another issue to milk.

I don't blame Afridi entirely for the comments, he is probably making post-retiral arrangements for a career as a politician. Afridi seems to be a smart chap and such comments of him are well, frankly speaking unexpected. If he were not smart , he would be another gullible victim of jingoism .Its the gullible and credulous people who want to hear such things . Half of them are illiterate, and even the literate ones are cursed by the presence of some prejudiced ones. We have such species here as well (unfortunately, I have encountered such creatures). The story is the same on both sides of the border. How else would you explain the popularity of channels like Aaj Tak, India TV and the likes which have nothing but an issue-hype propaganda. What is happening is a systematic milking of prejudiced minds, which unfortunately seem to comprise a large percentage of population across both sides of the border. Afridi, infact, pointed this out (media bias), though only for the Indian side; but that would be half the truth.

I would rather have a better initiative for the media on both sides of the border 'Saaksharta ki Aasha'. Do that and most of these problems would be gone. The smarter thing would be not to mind such comments and get on with our work.