I still live in this belief that we are living in a democratic nation, where some nice to read terms like equality, freedom, human rights, law etc., exists in a lovely bound document written over six decades ago, by some wise old men called "constitution". Though there are many reasons to convince myself, that the belief is nothing but hallucination and what we have is a flawed, depleted, poor distant cousin of what it should have been termed as democracy, But I am yet to come in complete terms with that. That reasons my sporadic outbursts and meaningless musings, like this.
We all know that civil rights, freedom and liberty are wrested by a powerful few, and rest just manage to float around or rather float for them. But still a few good things tend to filter down to the common man (probably the left over after the use and abuse of the powerful and mighty). Again I also have this hallucination (perhaps because getting used to seeing the tax deductions on the salary slip month after month) that there is something called national resources, where every citizen of this country have equal rights on (which we call public property) and name of the nation (India - which itself was a gift from Persian invaders like the term Hindu), is one among them. In that line of thought, representing the country in any international fora should or rather must rest with democratically elected civil bodies (what we call government). Which means that the nation cannot be represented by a any private individual or group of individuals or clubs that are neither authorized by the government/civil bodies nor a part of the democratic institution. Logic says any individual or group of Individual who are representing (or supposed to be representing) the nation should be at least controlled by the government and accountable to every citizen of the nation.
Now apply this logic about the Cricket Goliath, BCCI. They themselves have declared that they are an independent entity, a society which is registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act. and the Government of India or any democratically elected civil bodies have no control over the administration of BCCI. And they are using government owned stadia across the country at a nominal annual rent. They are a "private club consortium", that enjoy tax sops time and again, with a notion that they represent country India. But above all they get the right to use/abuse the brand name "India" absolutely free. When their team looses in a bilateral series, the media across the world beams headlines - India bites dust, India beaten, India defeated... whatever. And the responsibility or shame of loss is comfortably passed across to the country and the people. While BCCI stays completely unaccountable and above every law of land. I know they have bottomless coffers to keep the mouth shut of even powerful imperial powers these days. They sell the brand name India for corporates and exploit the brand India commercially and restricting the benefits out of it within themselves. and India becomes Sahara India, or Nike India or whatever... I think it's time for us to get united to fix this. I don't think it's in any means different from encroaching public space, or misusing public property. Not sure how can proceed though. It's high time that we should join forces to protect the misusse/abuse of brand India for commercial exploitation, on which every Indian citizen has absolute rights. Why don't they send their team in the name of BCCI.. not India. May be they can employ the best lawyers in the country and may counter legally,... but still there should be the people power that can ultimately reign, over all else.
