Sometimes the doctor prescribes exactly what the patient wished for. Two years before the current cyclical season of the cricket circus, the first Indian Premier League (IPL), comes to a close, a committee that had to decide on the quantum of punishment for wrongdoing on the part of owners of two teams, has recommended that India Cements Limited (ICL; owners of Chennai Super Kings) and Jaipur IPL Cricket Limited (JICL; owners of Rajasthan Royals) be suspended. The period: two years. The committee also imposed life bans on the Super Kings’ principal, Gurunath Meiyappan, and the Royals’ Raj Kundra.
Contrast this with the response to what seemed a rather innocuous crime of deflating footballs at the professional National Football League (NFL) in the United States: The NFL fined a team $1 million and docked them their 2016 and 2017 fourth-round picks five days after the release of an inquiry report, which found it “more probable than not” that two team personnel were involved in a scheme to deflate footballs before the American Football Conference Championship game, Boston.com reported on May 19. In 2006, the football club Juventus was relegated to the Italian second division as punishment after it was implicated in the country’s match-fixing scandal. Many more teams have faced similar fates.
In India, cricket is a religion, but action against wrongdoers is sporadic or non-existent. The present “punishment” is intended to be more than a wake-up call, but might not amount to much. After all, people, including fans of the game, elected to the Lok Sabha a cricket captain who had been held guilty of match-fixing. Besides, the silence of some of the most revered names in Indian cricket seems to indicate that the gravy train is as much on track as ever.
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How Not To Handle An Epidemic
The lockdowns were meant to buy time to put in place appropriate health measures and contain the coronavirus’ spread, but they have failed to achieve the objective and heaped immense misery on the marginalised sections of society. India is still in the exponential phase of the COVID-19 infection and community transmission is a reality that the government refuses to accept.
Tragedy on foot
As the COVID-19-induced lockdown cuts the ground beneath their feet in Tamil Nadu, thousands of migrant workers are trudging along the highway to the relative safety of their upcountry homes.
Sarpanchs as game changers
Odisha manages to keep COVID-19 well under control because of the strong participation of panchayati raj institutions and the community at the grass-roots level under the leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Scapegoating China
As the COVID-19 death rate spikes and the economy tanks in the United States, Donald Trump and his advisers target China and the World Health Organisation with an eye to winning the forthcoming presidential election.
New worries
Kerala’s measured approach to the pandemic and lockdown has yielded results. But it still has to grapple with their huge economic impact on its economy, which it feels the Centre’s special financial relief package does little to alleviate.
No love lost for labour
Taking advantage of the lockdown and the inability of workers to organise protests, many State governments introduce sweeping changes to labour laws to the detriment of workers on the pretext of reviving production and boosting the economy.
Capital's Malthusian moment
In a world that needs substantial reorienting of production and distribution, Indian capital is resorting to a militant form of moribund neoliberalism to overcome its current crisis. In this pursuit of profit, it is ready and willing to throw into mortal peril millions whom it adjudicates as not worth their means—an admixture of social Darwinism born of capital’s avarice and brutalism spawned by Hindutva. .
Understanding migration
When governments and their plans are found to be blatantly wanting in addressing reverse migration, exercises such as the Ekta Parishad’s survey of migrant workers throughout India can be useful to work out creative long-lasting solutions.
Waiting for Jabalpur moment
The Supreme Court’s role in ensuring executive accountability during the ongoing lockdown leaves much to be desired. Standing in shining contrast is the record of some High Courts.
An empty package
The Modi regime, which has been unable to control the COVID-19 infection, restore economic activity and provide relief to millions exposed to starvation, trains its sights on Indian democracy, making use of the panic generated by fear and a lockdown that forecloses paths of resistance.
