26/11

India is a, indeed, a strange land. And from every point of view-the cultural multi-diversity, the plethora of languages that we speak and, foremost, our diplomats. It's more than a year since the Mumbai attacks. Let's see what has happened since then.

To describe it tersely, one say, it went from outrage to rage to token gestures to a comfortable mellowing down. Nothing's changed after the Mumbai attacks. No tangible action. Nothing, in the least, that could result in some tangible action in the future. The oh-so-interesting case of Kasab, which invariably and with a growing uninteresting episode of events, hasn't yet be concluded, and what we get to encounter are the notorious and funny demands of the terrorist. Clearly, it's not helping. We could as well hang him while I complete this post. Some columns in the newspaper every now and then, with decreasing frequency and even more rapidly decreasing length of those, only suggest that we haven't yet got amnesia.

No one can ever forget what the mood was just after the attacks- it's surely going down the history line. The world at that time was sympathetic to India. The US was just too eager to help India to wipe out terrorism from Afghanistan and the place where it is bred- Pakistan. Pakistan sure had a tough time to deal with. But, I got to say, Pakistan diplomats are far too clever for us to recognize that. They stuck to their old theory that India is a "soft state". And we just proved it with a more concrete proof. Islamabad was keen to buy time and Delhi sold them- at a bargain. Now, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that US, too, thinks that. We are a soft state.

So is everything lost? The lives taken all goes futile? Supposedly, yes. And no one's helping. India took a tough stance by stopping outright the dialogue process with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. Though they should have done that when the Shimla pact was no more respected, but nevertheless, better late than never. Omar Abudallah, the CM of J&K, wants the talks to be revived now. It is no surprise Pakistan seconds that opinion. And the US, given the turn of events, will also want that- maybe it'll also lure India to start the peace talks by showing a lollipop called the "permanent member of the Security Council". Newspaper editorials, which at that time, commended Delhi's move now talk in the same vein. But the question why should the talks be revived? Just because a year has passed and the dead people doesn't matter anymore. Talks were cancelled for a reason- so that some tangible action will be taken by Pakistan. Even after dossier after dossier on the masterminding of the Pakistan terrorists, Pakistan still claims the evidences are inconclusive.

In short, the Mumbai attacks were just another chapter with no real significance. India is known not to have a foreign policy- only a Pakistan policy. It seems Delhi is losing the Pakistan policy as well. War is not the answer. The dilemma is, what is the answer?

If such attacks are meant just to be forgotten, India might well be schizophrenic.

BCCI- A complete business organization

The Income Tax Department of India has slapped a 120 crore income tax on the BCCI because the BCCI has been reduced to just another business organization. Now, this is not really uncalled for. In recent times, it was but only more than obvious that the BCCI has been doing very brisk business earning huge revenues for every run scored, for every wicket taken, for every boundary hit. We are all aware of how the advertisements just pop out from the bottom of television screen reducing the actual play arena to an even smaller area. I found it disgusting at many times- peculiarly during the T20 matches when the frequency of boundaries is very large.

The I-T department has said that the surpluses which the BCCI generates from the matches and the aggressive advertising policies are spent on the players and not on the further promotion of the game- which is true. We haven't quite seen newer venues for the game, the game being taken so much into the European markets where the game is virtually non-existent. Being the almost-supreme body of cricket management, these ought to be the duties of the BCCI. After all, what's the use of giving so many tax exemptions for the organizing body if its main job is just to organize matches and earn profits rather than doing something for the game per se? Apart from the subcontinent and Australia, the reach of the game is very minimal. Even in England and the West Indies, the game has been suffering so much so that, it'll not be a surprise that we'll get to read editorials on the decline of the game in these regions in a year or two.

One can argue that BCCI gave us the IPL- possibly the biggest and hottest thing in cricket bringing so many people together from various nations and raking up huge revenues. The big question is how is that money being spent? We haven't seen BCCI building new stadiums anywhere in India. Many states doesn't even host a game of cricket is years. The current debacle of the match in Feroz Shah Kotla is another case to argue in favor of the tax exemptions. We want the cricket- as lovely a game as it is- should be accessible to even a larger population- even though the population currently is enough for the game. But that is not the point. Just because we have achieved a certain stage of excellence doesn't mean that we stop striving!

I can only hope that the stringent measure taken by the I-T department be a clarion call to the BCCI and they start thinking on the lines of betterment to the game rather than just betterment of the players and themselves. The audience that watches the game deserver more than just matches.

Copenhagen- A joke?

What was that all about? After all the brouhaha, after all those editorial columns and all those ceaseless ranting on television, the Copenhagen summit can aptly be summarized as a joke- a very badly brewed wine which leaves a really bad taste, an ineffective Viagra which just doesn't give an erection…puhhh! The tall claims by politicians all over the world- especially from India and China- were just that-claims!

At the end of summit, the only thing which one would have noticed was that the summit instead of coming up with concrete solutions for reducing the greenhouse effect and somehow keeping the temperature rise below 2 degrees centigrade, only added to the climate and greenhouse woes. Oh, you can't just ignore the planes and jets which pumped more gases into the atmosphere which were used to carry the delegates to a useless summit which was speculated to bring about a huge change in the climate change equations. Mr. Obama and his Obamonomics really is something to be aware of. He is the one person whose contribution to this catastrophe cannot be overlooked. Toeing the line is what all he could conjure up. Not giving into the demands of the developing world (which of course Obama might still be referring to as "the Third World" in his study) and to the demands of the time, the USA, quite typical of itself, was always more interested in its own domestic problems rather than concerning itself with global problems- which it ought to considering the fact that it just loves to play Godfather in every damn thing that happens in the world.

So much for the "USA-Obama" bashing. European nations, which by far, have been the worst contributors to the climate change, were equally reluctant. Well, in the case of European nations the reluctance was understandable. They were never very enthusiastic about the whole affair. What was surprising, but, was the stance of Japan in the whole issue. With the leadership change in Japan, I had thought that the new leadership would be more than keen to display its might in a global platform and take on the challenge which USA seems to stall every time. But so much so for wishes.

India and China, and maybe Brazil, were the only countries which seemed to be enthusiastic to take on the menace at once. They were ready to decrease their carbon footprint subject to the condition that the already developed countries- which incidentally have been the major contributors- should do the same to an even greater magnitude. Now that is not an unrealistic demand- the per capita carbon footprint in India and China is still way lower than USA. Now some would account that to the large population of the two countries but that is baseless argument- energy consumption should be measured on a per-person basis and not country-wise.

The final outcome of the summit was that it was decided that the greenhouse effect needs to be mitigated by the joint efforts of all the countries by mitigation or alternative sources of energy and that the climate change is indeed a grave concern. Like we didn't know that! Seriously, does someone think we need a damn summit to realize the ill-effects the graveness of the situation? No doubt, the climate change experts and scientists say, in a whisper in public and screaming in private, the game is over.