By Ranjona Banerji
It’s been seven months since civil unrest began in the Indian state of Manipur, six weeks since Israel started bombarding Gaza with its military might after a Hamas terrorist attack on October 7 and 10 days since 41 labourers have been trapped in an under-construction tunnel in the Uttarakhand Himalayas.
In all these three situations, either little has changed or things have got much worse.
During this time, the cricketing world played a World Cup in India. Like quidditch in the Harry Potter series, this is a compelling game but has few takers worldwide because of its playing norms and ethos. Even without the requirement for flying brooms.
Priorities however must be kept and cricket is cricket, a religion in India, an Indian game invented. Add to the clamour for the game itself, the political involvement, from some important person in the Board for Control of Cricket in India to the Prime Minister himself. Please forgive the order in which I have written the last sentence. Under no circumstances did I mean to imply that the important person in the BCCI is more important than the Prime Minister himself.
This meant that all eyes were on the final, which India was destined to win according to the dispensation’s organisation system. I don’t know the going rate to hire the Indian Air Force to fly past your home when you have a big party, but the BCCI managed to hire out nation’s fighter jets to fly over the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad.
As the game progressed and Australia refused to follow the Indian script, a somewhat less-than-perfect scenario emerged. The Presence of The Great Man did not lead to sport changing its rules. A hasty trophy ceremony full of bad hospitality was the result, plus the usual behaviour of something not going the dispensation’s way – insults and abuse at the winning team. But a quick photo op with the losing Indian team was quickly cobbled together. Where you have cameras and a captive media, why lose the opportunity to make yourself look better under any circumstances?
Should we return to the first three events mentioned at the beginning? The civil war is still on. Sporadic incidents of violence continue. Anger continues. Government inaction and media disinterest continues. SNAFU is some air force somewhere or the other put it.
The bombardment is still on. India’s media put on its camouflage costumes, popped down far from the violence zone and did its best war-time acting and returned. It then lost some interest in proceedings, unless it could use them to stir anti-Muslim sentiment in India. The signals from their masters were mixed anyway. The ruling party supports Israel, so the mainstream media had to support Israel. But the official Indian government position has always been to support Palestine. Therefore in India, you can be stopped by the police for supporting the official Indian position and lauded for supporting the official party position. If you were a cowardly TV studio, what would you do?
The trapped labourers have finally got a bit of traction from some sections of the media. The reasons for the collapse of the tunnel have got little or no attention. Instead, the company tasked with making the tunnel, engineers involved, bureaucrats, the labourers themselves are all going to have to share the blame.
Why the tunnel is being built in the first place – well, you cannot expect the media to get into that.
Why were scientists, geologists, various experts ignored – well, you know experts, they rarely say what you want them to.
I forgot about some assembly elections. They happened and will still happen. We know these to the extent that the Great Man jumped into a costume and waved at crowds. TV told us. As for the results, it all depends on the co-relation between machine and man.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.
