A straight six to long on by the leader of Indian cricket team, and the dream of billions of cricket fans in country came true in a memorable way. Unlike the emotional Yuvi who came running to hug his captain after the winning shot, the captain was calm, composed and picked up the wicket with a charismatic smile on his face. Like the one billion ppl of India, even I was too dumbstruck to realise that we made it. It was not getting registered in my mind that we are now world champs. We made it to the top by beating all the great teams(By great team, I consider the cricket team as well as the nation which they represent, except for one – pak) in the KO’s. It took unusually more time for me to come in terms with the situation and exclaim with happiness. What remains etched in my mind is the style which the winning sixer-shot was hit by the captain. He just watched it fly high in the sky of coastal city and reach the stands, rotated his bat in style in air, pulled the wicket from its position behind him. Anyone, any great person would have either jumped in air, thumped his fist into air multiple times or atleast ran towards the other teammate in non-striker end. But this guy, displayed unusual calmness and just had a smile on his face to display the happiness inside. It was just incredible to see such quite-celebration in him. I was instantly drawn towards his style. What a way to celebrate. How incredible his rag to riches story is. And surprisingly, unlike others, this guy’s rag to riches story was hardly known till this day. I was unable to believe that this guy, who managed the TRP-crazy media, the billion ppl’s fanatic dream, the money-powered cricket board, came from a simple-middle class family and worked in Railways for 3 years as TC!!!!!!!!!!!!!! By the time I complete this blog, I guess a Bollywood director would have already finalized a biography-script on the ‘captain-cool’.
Now it was time for our so called socialst inclined political-world champs to chip in and announce the awards for the 16-member squad. Some states gave away the top award – Ratna, some announced land gifts (read BSY), some gave cash awards. The conservationist Momota Banerjee acted like a true Indian (political) “DIDI” by announcing lifetime-free-first class-travel passes for the squad. All this happened and the taxpayer seemed hardly bothered. A politician from our own “namma Kar-nataka” went on to say “People would love to see their heroes being honoured for what they have achieved for them. So its good to give away awards to them”. I wondered what would pass thru the minds of millions of people in govt hospitals, slums, awfully poor rural areas etc., when they watch these Big-hearted politicos announce these expensive gifts on already rich players.
I know that this is rare moment and they certainly deserve this. I even know the fact that it is virtually impossible to eradicate the poverty and uplift the backward class with any number of social welfare projects. Recently the newspaper had published that even if the govt plans to build high rise apartments for those living in slums, it has to build some 100’s of them with each tower having 30 floors and certain number of flats in each floor( I don’t remember the number) for rehabilitating Bangalore slum dwellers alone!! Definitely a near to impossible task.
But my idea is why not spend that award money in some useful way. We can kill two birds in one shot if –
- announce the award for the squad
- but utilize the money for the people.
It looks like a puzzle but infact very simple to understand. The state govt can start some social welfare projects in the name of the cricketers. One each project in the name of each cricketer would mean 16 different projects. It can be as simple as building some 100 govt schools in a district, Setting up scholarships in rural schools, building parks or playgrounds in semi-urban or urban area, providing goodies on this day of every year for govt school students (to pull students in rural areas to school), etc. I’m very confident that this will be the more effective way of recognizing the winning team members and every person in the team would accept this whole heartedly. Who would not like to see a social project being run in their name, benefiting thousands of needy people?
We are still a developing nation not because we are not capable. But there is no direction or motivation for the people to come forward and do their bit towards it. The education being top most item in the list of action items. The 1983 sikh riots, the godhra incident and numerous other incidents are the examples of the atrocity the politicians have committed on the people by taking advantage of their illiteracy. A educated man would atleast, think 2nd time before doing anything – be it casting votes, being taken for ride by “neta” during riots . Several innovative measures by govt such as RTI act and all are still under-utilized, even after years of their start. There can be no other better example than the misuse of NREGS by the “babus”.
The fact that one of the member of the winning team, Munaf patel is almost illiterate ( I refrain from calling him illiterate since I have strong feeling that his teammates would have atleast helped him to read and write his name by now. Look at the Bhajji’s Pinglish (Punjabi+English) speech these days. A remarkable journey from Hindi-answers-to-english-questions to the confident Pinglish replies) tells us the poor literacy rates acting as dampener to our movement towards the development path. It’s sheer luck that this poorly educated guy made it to the elite Indian cricket team. But just think about the millions of other Munaf’s in our country who would wait for one such silver line in the cloud to bring about the change in their life. It’s nothing but the education which can deliver it.
As I walk back from Gym to home, I pass thru the modest slum which is sprawling at the backside of our home. Guys and girls in their 20’s something, dressed in the company uninforms such as Reliance fresh, Spencers, Total, Big Bazar etc get ready to go to their respective work locations some of which are located in posh malls. The only fact that they can manage to speak moderate English has helped them to get these decent jobs which pay them fairly without any problems. Its good that the boom in economy has brought in several global supermarkets to Indian metro cities and thus ensured the employment to these moderately educated people. But not all of them are educated enough to plan for their future. Its not surprising to see them come out of their slums in bikes such as Apache, pulsar etc and dressed in jeans and T-shirts. This applies to both guys as well as girls in the slum. This is due to the fact that they are not educated enough to plan for their future. There are several factors for this. The temporary job which has enabled them to earn in 1000’s, a place to stay in slum where they don’t pay for water, electricity etc, irregular bonuses in forms of several elections that happen in our country etc are some of them. But these are nothing but symptom. The root cause is lack of eduction which has created this irresponsibility and ignorance. They desperately want to overcome the inferiority complex which they suffer when they see the economically stronger section of people. But in this process they hardly realise that they are the ultimate sufferers due to their erratic and vision less spending.
India won the world cup after 28 years. But what have we achieved in our country in these 28 years so that we can celebrate it without any cause of worry? It’s ironical to see the lack of pace with which the country has progressed in these 28 years when compared to the pace with which cricket has developed. Its high time that our leaders, the media, the educated people, the corporate, the civil servants stop fancying the idea of awarding the cricketers “in tandem with people’s excitement” and start acting towards reality. We have proved to the world that we are a great cricketing nation. And it should not stop at that. We should prove that we are good in development too. We need to win a world cup in this competition of development also. As of now, I would give that world cup of development competition to JAPAN.
