[PEN-L:30497] on cricket and inequality

["Anthony D'Costa" <dcosta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 EPW Commentary
September 14, 2002

Calcutta Diary--by AM (btw is Ashok Mitra)

Our star cricketers, some of whom reputedly earn anything between 20 and
50 crore rupees annually, should have the modesty to admit what they owe
to the nation's poor. It is because the poor are oppressed and exploited
that the cozy consumer goods market, backed by ample purchasing power, has
emerged. The cricketers may have divine talent, but it would not have
earned them their living had the poor, by their abnegation, either
voluntary or forced, not paved the way for the creation of fabulous wealth
on the part of the nation's cricketers.

An esteemed colleague, himself resident in Gujarat, was commenting on the
shameful events in the state six months ago. He was particularly
distressed at the phenomenon of supposedly sophisticated women from
affluent families actively participating in the vandalising of shops owned
by members of the minority community. This development, he felt, provides
concrete evidence of the growing materialism of the Indian middle class.

The colleague went a bit further. He wondered whether this materialism is
not the outcome of the process of globalisation the country has been going
through since the early 1990s, and just stopped short of suggesting a
direct link between globalisation and avarice. Even this half-inference is
significant, for it amounts to a half-confession: the colleague has been
one of the most prominent votaries of global integration.

Whatever that be, why blame the Gujarati gentry alone? The urge to indulge
in in the good things of life is a ubiquitous propensity in the country.
Worn-out cliches of the genre of plain living and high thinking now raise
a horse laugh. The pristine example of the new national culture is the
demeanour of our top-notch cricketers. They had recently engaged in a
major hassle with the Board of Control for Cricket in India. A mini-World
Cup championship competition is scheduled to begin in Colombo from next
week. The International Cricket Conference, of which the BCCI is an
affiliate and which is organising the event, has set some ground rules for
players participating in the competition: for one month preceding and one
month following the mini-World Cup matches, the players will not be
entitled to enter into any separate contractual arrangements with their
own sponsors; the ICC has its sponsor and its writ must be obeyed by each
and every player. That is to say, no player will be permitted to benefit
from double sponsorship, the ICC sponsors endorsements will be the only
ones on display.

This will without doubt cause some inconvenience, including monetary loss,
to some players. While initially the grumbling with the terms set was
fairly widespread, players from other contesting countries nonetheless
decided to fall in and abide by the ICC rule. Not the Indian players. They
held out and refused to sign on the dotted line till the very last hour.
They were served an ultimatum by the BCCI, which went to the length of
choosing a substitute set of players to go to Colombo in case the senior
players continued to be adamant. Of the 18 Indian cricketers currently
touring England who refused to sign, a handful of three or four star
players in fact took the initiative to organise the stand-off.

The front-rank players carry considerable weight. Because of the dazzle of
their performance they have emerged as outstanding crowd-pullers: sponsors
make a beeline for them. The BCCI shows them deference; gate receipts and
revenue from the sale of television rights, of which the BCCI gets a hefty
share, are correlated to the performance of these cricketers in the field.
It is a heavenly situation for the prima donnas in the team. They are
pampered and coddled by the cricket authorities, by advertisers and by the
general public. Those players who are yet to receive recognition as master
performers also bank on the patronage of the stars, who can help them
during the team selection process. Besides, the seniors are in a position
to place the juniors in touch with sponsors; proximity to sponsors is
crucial for money-making from advertisements and endorsements. It is
therefore virtually impossible for the lesser players not to agree with
what the seniors say. The star players come to assume that the universe
revolves round them. They earn fabulous sums. They think they have the
divine right to such fabulous money-making. The fact that players from
other countries have signed the ICC pledge but Indian cricketers have not
is not much of a puzzle either. The relative size of the Indian consumer
goods market counts. Ours is a poor country  one of the poorest in United
Nations ranking  but at least 10 per cent of Indian citizens, one hundred
million people or thereabouts, have a comfortable level of living
comparable to, and sometimes superior to, that enjoyed by the average
population in quite a few advanced industrial countries. None of the other
cricket-playing countries can boast of an affluent citizenry of near-equal
size able to bid for consumer goods and services from the market. The
players from the other countries have obviously less bargaining power than
the Indian players. Cricketers from Britain, Australia, New Zealand,
Pakistan and South Africa caved in in no time: the Indian players did not.
The latter have been most forthcoming in expressing their views. It is
they who represent Indian cricket, and not the BCCI. Men and women flock
to the ground or sit glued to the television screen to watch them play and
marvel at the quality of their performance. The profit which the ICC will
make from holding the mini-World Cup business will be partly distributed
among the cricketing authorities in the different member countries. The
BCCI will be one of the beneficiaries. The Indian Board of Cricket Control
however, the players complain, is likely to pass on to them a bare 5 per
cent of what it will get from the ICC. In the circumstances, to prohibit
them from entering into separate contracts with their personal sponsors
is, according to Indian players, unjust in the extreme. They who sow
should reap, at least should reap a reasonable share of the crop. If the
players refused to sign the bond and opted out of the mini-World Cup, gate
receipts and revenue from television rights was bound to tumble. The BCCI
should therefore see reason and join with the players to present a united
front against the International Cricket Conference. It is, the players
have suggested, an immense tragedy that, instead, the BCCI should decide
to combine with the ICC for the purpose of doing in the poor players.

Maybe the players have a point, perhaps they deserve a bit more generosity
from the ICC and BCCI, although one can never be sure whether they are
virtue personified. They certainly have been overdoing their show of
intransigence. Self-righteousness should not go too far. The cricket stars
are of course blessed by ethereal talent, the exhibition of this talent
dazzles spectators and telly-watchers. They therefore have the right, they
argue, to set their own price. If the ICC and the BCCI would not listen to
them, they would refuse to cooperate; if they did not cooperate, the
mini-World Cup, they were sanguine, would be a flop.

Indias cricketers were suffering from a handicap though. Players from all
other participating countries had signed; the Indian players were the only
deviants. The absence of the Indian stars would have detracted from the
worth of the event to Indian viewers. Even so, the Australians, the
Pakistanis, the West Indians, the New Zealanders and the English teams
would have been in Colombo in full strength. The Indian absence, or the
presence of a second-grade Indian team, would not have made much of a
difference. Television watchers elsewhere in the world would hardly miss
the Indian super-stars. The Indian players matter, but they largely matter
for the Indian consumer market. The potential loss in case the Indian
stars boycotted Colombo would have affected mostly the sponsors in India;
and had they been adversely affected, the money flow to the Indian stars
would have thinned out too.

But leave all this aside. Does not the ego of Indias cricket divas richly
deserve to be brought down a peg or two? They have a market value only
because the Indian economy has been so organised as to ensure the
availability of roughly one hundred million comfortably placed people in a
position to acquire and enjoy consumer goods of all descriptions. The
economy is what it is since the system is what it is, ravaged by
inegalitarianism, with horrid inequalities in income and assets
distribution. The poor starve, they go without clothes, they lack shelter,
they do not get the opportunity to elementary education, they are denied
minimum health facilities, including supply of potable water, they are
deprived of cultivable land and adequate employment opportunities. On
paper India is a democratic, socialistic republic. But both democracy and
socialism are most peculiarly defined: the top decile of the nation grab
all the goodies. They are able to do it at the courtesy of the rest of the
population. The rest of the population are not even rudimentarily
organised and bereft of the awareness which could spur them to fight for
and win their rights.

The inequalities in the distribution of income and assets constitute the
key element enabling the setting up of an alluring consumer goods market
made up of one hundred million luxury-loving Indians. Our star cricketers,
some of whom reputedly earn anything between 20 and 50 crore rupees
annually, should have the modesty to admit what they owe to the nations
poor. It is because the poor are oppressed and exploited that the cozy
consumer goods market, backed by ample purchasing power, has emerged. The
cricketers may have divine talent, but it would not have earned them their
living had the poor, by their abnegation, either voluntary or forced, not
paved the way for the creation of fabulous wealth on the part of the
nations cricketers.

One final matter. True, in the post-globalisation era, morality is a dirty
word. Never mind, what about a sense of aesthetics? Does it not sound
obscene to the cricket prima donnas that, while drought and other
afflictions scorch the land and nearly one-third of the nation have not
the means to buy even subsistence food, they engage in bargaining bouts to
raise their own annual income from five to 10 crore rupees, or from 10 to
20 crore? But, then, aesthetics is a matter defined by narrow
subjectivity: these young men, earning astronomical sums of money, feel
terribly exploited; therefore they are exploited.

It was perhaps ego that was proving the stumbling block, but finally,
latest reports indicate, the Indian players too have capitulated and
signed the document they were asked to sign. The particular chapter may
have ended for the present. The issue nonetheless remains: the cricketers
need to be taught the facts of life.


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Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor
Comparative International Development
University of Washington			Campus Box 358436
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA

Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax :  (253) 692-5718
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