Further reflections on the bust-up at the Games

What does one make of the hockey let-down in London? For someone as emotionally invested in hockey as me, it is hard to come to terms with what actually happened, and even harder to explain -- thus the silence. Yet things have to be explained, even if shakily, toward finding a sense of closure. It is indeed an irony that we now have to invent reasons to understand our failure when we should ideally be spending time analyzing our near-misses.

First things first -- the caveat. I do not watch live matches any more (cricket, hockey, chess, or any other sport that India/Indians plays/play) because it has been too bad on my heart for a long time now. While I do follow most of the American and AFL/NRL sporting scene live, the last live non-dead Indian match I remember seeing was the 1996 World Cup semi-final loss. So you have to realize what I say is based on what I have read and what little I have seen. In fact, it is highly likely that you might have seen much much more of the live action than me. So if you find the following flaky, well, just assume that its the price to pay for not seeing me dead from an arrhythmic jolt. But then, you have indeed heard from me all this while when I have not seen a single live match which you might have seen more closely than me, so go figure.

What caused the bust-up?

1) The enormity of the pressures and the expectations: For a team that missed out on Beijing and the continual funereal atmosphere that one witnessed over the last four years, it was indeed a relief to wallop the French with a tennis score at Delhi. However, all that relief only begat more expectations and do-well cards. The week before the send-off to the pre-London European tour saw a massive who's who of India's hockey afficianados come together to wish the team well. While it was a generous gesture on the part of Hockey India to invite the golden oldies, was it a Hobson's choice in disguise? There were indeed reports of how Sandeep, Sardara and Bharat were enamored by the gold medals which some of the yesteryear stalwarts had brought with them. Surely, such an assemblage could indeed be an inspiration. But then the eyes on the team could have had an impact on the free-flowing nature of the game.

The team became aware of what it had signed up to and it is hard to deliver under such circumstances unless one is mentally trained for it. While some people thrive well under pressure, for many, the overwhelming nature of pressure can unleash a self-questioning frenzy conveniently labeled as choking. From all indications, the mental training of the Indian hockey team was/is a complete shambles. In some sense, the team forgot what it could do. And when that happens, one makes mistakes aplenty; things that one practices a gazillion times become hard and impossible to deliver in reality. We are all aware of this in our real life, the hockey team just showed us how human they are.

2) Two Goalkeepers and one Captain: Having Sreejesh and Bharat Chhetri as goalkeepers is not the same as sending Parthiv Patel and MS Dhoni as wicket-keepers on a long English summer or a bruising tour Down Under. There were indications and critiques by some commentators that the body language of a lack of first-choice goalkeeper could come back to bite us. If you cannot assure a place for the captain of the team in the final 11 that takes to the ground, what subconscious message does that signify: is the captain not the first among equals? Or has Indian hockey grown over the concept of a captain? Such deleterious thinking was what led to the ouster of Rajpal Singh and Prabhjyot Singh from the Indian team (and an internal blood-feud of sorts) after the massive mess in Canada under Jose Brasa.

3) Constant ring-a-ring-a roses: For long, people who should have been in the line-up such as Prabhjyot, Rajpal and Arjun have been thrown to the dogs. It was only a miracle that saw Danish get to the Games. It appears that the only person who can be assured of a spot in the team seems to be someone who kowtows to the final authority of Hockey India. This is not how a game -- any game -- is played. While Hockey India needs to hold the bar high on disciplinary matters and eject those who display tendencies of violence/consistent aggression on the field (yes, we have had our fair share of the player chasing the referee with his stick on not being awarded a PC) or dope cheats (not the marijuana takers, hint hint!), that does not mean that someone asking for higher remuneration should be dismissed at like a non-entity. A team has to grow over a certain period before it can gel enough to perform well -- this is what clicked for the Indian cricket team in the 2000s after the core was formed in the early- to mid-90s. What is the core of the Indian hockey team? Sardara and Sandeep. The rest fall into newcomers and inexperienceds. Except for Ignace and Sandeep, noone has had an Olympic moment before. Even modulo the Santiago meltdown, India fielded one of the youngest teams in the event. While youth in general is no solution or a non-solution to life's woes, it is just the indication of how Hockey India administers its panchayati raj.

4) Goodbye to some stars and bring on young blood: A simple calculation shows that Bharat will be 34 at Rio, Ignace will be 35, Shivendra will be 33, and Tushar will be 31. The current core -- Sandeep and Sardara -- will both be 30 while the rest of the lot will be their mid- to late-20s. While Bharat has opened up Indian hockey to the Nepali segment in India and has been a shining light in this regard, it is time to recognize the hampering nature of a Bharat vs. Sreejesh battle. While a golden handshake to Bharat should not be surprising, it is time to honor his contributions to Indian hockey. In that regard, we do not have a Hall of Fame, which we sorely need.

It is also time that the major star of WSH, Gurjinder Singh, be asked to come forward and be awarded an amnesty program. While the IHF-HI fistfights have been irritating, they are more sinister when they bottle up talent. Talent unearthed by either organization is still talent and that too Indian talent. That said, where is the India-A ranks? One Roshan Minz or Amit Rohidas does not make for all the baggages that make the junior India trips. For which,

5) one has to call a cat a cat and blame the Punjabi lobby: For way too long, Indian hockey has become synonymous with Punjab and the attendant politics between the various districts of Punjab. Of late, Haryana has joined this melee -- with its various poaching activities. While the Sikhs have been first among equals in terms of contributions to Indian hockey and immensely contributing to so many of the eight golds that we did get, it is also true that inter-casteist and intra-Punjabi politics have been exported to IHF and HI. In fact, a long whine profile from the rest of India is that the administration is oblivious to talent from elsewhere. Specifically, the tribal states of the Northeast and Jharkhand/Chhattisgarh have wondered how to get someone in the team even if the first captain of the Indian hockey team was one Jaipal Singh Munda. In this edition, only Birendra and Ignace could make the line-up while Kothajit went on standby mode, while there were many contenders from Jharkhand to start with. One specific item to blame is the junior India tours, which are often loaded with Punjabi/Sikh players in favor with the establishment. It has been an open secret that many of the junior rankers do not exhibit the talent commensurate with a junior India cap. Even given that success at the junior India ranks is not translatable to success at the Olympics and the senior level, in general, a call to fix Punjabi political nexus in terms of team selection at all levels should be a no-brainer. Such a nexus bottles up talent from rising up and makes the pursuit of hockey a short-term fix for monetary reasons.

All said and done...
1) This is not as bad a team as people make it out to be. When I hear comments such as "these guys should go back and learn how to trap the ball, ..." sorry to sound arrogant, but it lacks common sense. It is a truism that no team traps the ball well. Gone are the days of grassfield hockey where trapping is possible with near-100% accuracy. The fast-paced nature of the current game means that hockey is no longer a Dravid-esque technical showcasing of one's hockey skills. Another game that has gone from accuracy to power over the years is basketball. A cursory look at the All Star Game shows that except for the three-pointer contest, it is all about showmanship, power and raw brute, rather than about accuracy, angles and acumen. Coming back, it is not how you trap the ball alone, but how you play on the mat, how you beat up your opponent, how you avoid those stupid mistakes in the D. Or rather, how you commit less of them and how if you commit them, your team can recover well.

So when I hear the rhetoric of the "trap card", it sounds exactly in the same vein as the advise on how the Indian middle-order should learn to play with a straight bat or a dead bat or a dour defense. And then we have Sehwag, a rule unto himself. At the end of the day, the rules are for people who want to obey. For those who want to rule, make the damn rules your way.

2) While going back to learn trapping is stupid, polishing off the skill-sets is what we need. We keep seeing the repeated failures of our penalty corner teams. Sandeep was a failure in that regard at London as was Raghunath. One sad thing that happens at the Everest is that people constantly watch you and learn from your successes and their mistakes. Life at the top is summarized as: running at a very fast pace to stand at the same place. For the hockey team, that is a pun with a not so delightful visualization.

3) It is going to become fashionable to abuse the hockey team. Or worse, becoming lethargic and uninterested in their outings. Can we just assure ourselves that a 12th place finish is better than a FIH card that shows a 13th rank under the Olympics listing? We missed a monumental chance to climb out of the rut in terms of FIH rankings and will have to wait till the next World Cup in two years time. Then, there is the question of Asian Games and an automatic qualifer. There is of course the Champions Trophy invite that has come a year too late. While I am waiting to see the BlackShirts implode under a lack of depth (that usually happens), let us take a book out of their cup-board and bring Gurjinder and some of the other stars of WSH.

4) Firing Mike Nobbs is not only a stupid idea at this stage, especially given the long contract that he has signed with HI, but also being instantaneous in terms of reactionism. Whether Mike Nobbs works for Indian Hockey or not will be visible sooner than later. What Mike Nobbs needs to learn to conduct business with HI is that he has to assert his rights in having the full share of Indian stars for selection. He cannot be seen to kowtow endlessly to HI and banish one player and performer after another only to keep a frayed peace in his office.

5) Scientific coaching is as much a non-existent entity in Indian hockey as is lack of high quality umpires in Indian cricket. What the Indian team needs is someone who can keep up with the Jonases (asses, if you like) who make the rules sitting in Brussels. Rules keep constantly changing and being a country with a huge market gives us the right to assert ourselves. At the end of the day, Indian viewership brought a good fraction of FIH's profits in the last two years. While our economy will be accommodated within the world political sphere, our own diffidence needs to go. Hockey India, grow a few balls please!

6) We need midfielders and we need defenders. It has become a fashion for everyone to want to score a goal, saving one is a thankless job. Taking on deep defense and midfield roles need to be made fashionable. As much as one hates to mention it, the National Cricket Academy and MRF "Pace" Foundation have been responsible for unearthing some good cricket talent in India. We do not have the hockey equivalent of these academies. We do not have a single pink and blue turf, let alone as many astroturfs as we would like. And we kill what we have with poor upkeep and shambolic mismanagement. Can we grow some brains, please?

7) Finally, either the Mittal Champions Trust or the Olympics Gold Quest could come forward to sponsor our team given that grassroots supports is sporadic at best and useless to bank on for long-term plans. Given that the BCCI effort to draw tax benefits by supporting other games have been shot down by the tax-wisemen of India, MCT/OGQ have to loosen up their individual efforts' definition and think long and hard about what a Gold means for India and Indian prestige/self-esteem. As for the constant clamor of demoting the hockey team from funding by MSYA, thanks, but no thanks. Not for the money, but for the wise words. We have had enough of these already from the wise sadhus of India that only India can generate with such gay abandon.

8) And finally finally (really!), my vote for the HI President goes to either Shivraj Singh Chauhan or Ajay Maken. While having a politician administrator is a necessary evil that we cannot overcome in India, I would at least have a workaholic lover of the game rather than a brick in the wall. The last Tamil Nadu contribution to hockey has been one K. Jyothikumaran, a sad tale of how hockey has become in the state. On the other hand, a 108 bullet salute to Shri Chauhan's yeoman support for the Great Game! When people say, "we need Narendra Modi for PMship", it is remarkable that such a sentiment ignores the reality that "we do not need one Narendra Modi, but we need 108 of them." Here is one, take that BJP, you have a hero in your midst amidst all the zeros that add the numbers. Failure at spotting the talent is perhaps an Indian truism.

Onwards!! And Aye Gorkhali!!!

Politically Incorrect: Comments on recent incidents

1) The BJP was given a chance to prove its governance credentials in the South when the people of Karnataka elected the party to power in 2008. While it could be argued that the 2008 win for BJP was a punishment to the JDS for reneging on the power-sharing deal, it was a great opportunity for the BJP to make its case in the entire South by means of proof by action, rather than via the standard rhetoric of proof by words. Four years into the BJP rule, we see that the BJP is not very different from the other national party -- the INC. Intrigues and factionalism, divisiveness and ineptitude, endless corruption -- you name it, BJP == INC. Latest in the exhibit list of inept behavior by the BJP is the exodus of Indians from the Northeast from Bangalore. On why this is ineptitude on the part of the State government and not the Central government, here is some civics 101: Law and order is a state subject with the administrative hierarchy going the way of Home Secretary --> Home Minister --> Chief Minister. May be the parties involved are busy soothing the egos of the Vokkaligas and Lingayats frayed in the succession battle of a few weeks back? Or may be everyone involved is counting the moneys tithed by the mining mafia?

2) That said, there are fears that the Indians from the Northeast will be divorced from "mainstream" India because of this one incident. Nothing could be farther from the truth and this one incident will have little say in the matters. The truth on the ground is that we "mainstream" Indians have a deep fear in accommodating people who do not look like us, who do not speak like us, who do not live like us, who do not [fill in the blank]. That fear is not patented by "mainstream" Indians, it is a classic sociological divide that comes naturally. Why, we even sub-divide ourselves and hunt down affinities to belong to, an entirely different story. Modulo all that, we really have a problem that we are unwilling to accede to and which the "mainstream" Indians are guilty of -- we have divorced our fellow Indians from the Northeast from us and us from them, because they look slightly differently from us, and that too only because of microscopic mitochondrial mutations. No amount of ostrich-like hiding under the bench will change facts on the ground. In that sense, this one incident will have no bearing on how people behave with each other and treat each other. "Mainstream" middle-class Indians in their vanity have essentially ignored much of India, why we hardly have a clue about rural India and what goes for educational facilities in rural India.

3) Let us look at this exodus of Indians from the Northeast from major "mainstream" Indian cities a bit more objectively. If it appears that the source of all this fear and paranoia is indeed provocative social media messages from the Islamist segment of India, this act will have indeed set forth a circle of reactive acts. In one swift act, the Muslims (from West Bengal, Bihar, Bangladesh, Assam and Manipur) will have created bucketloads of enemies at the drop of a hat. Manipuri Pangals have had a long history of co-existing with the Mizo, Naga and Hindu/Sanamahi Meitei affinities, but then as we saw in the blockades and counter-blockades of not-so-long-back, it is dried wood that needs no big sparks to set fire to. It is indeed the valiant who will blasely assume that only one party is the eternal victim and the other the eternal victimizer. Even a casual reading of history shows that both the Muslims and other "tribal" affinities have hit back and forth with violence and vengeance that is all so human. If there is a truce on the ground as witnessed by less of Muslim-tribal fistfights, it is because of a stalemate enforced by lack of demographic opportunities to see a battle to the finish. However, such a game at its supposed Nash equilibrium can change in the solution contours by a small change in the assumptions, such as more determination to seek vengeance. So, in short, the Muslims (if indeed they are the agent provocateurs) have by choice pitted themselves in a losing demographic battle in "mainstream" India and bucketloads of enemies with potentially more determination in the Northeast. If that is indeed a trajectory chosen by strategic foresights rather than by pure chance, such insights richly deserve the Darwin award!

4) Continuing on the path of continually questioning assumptions, here is one more. The recent Bangladeshi Muslim and Assamese Muslim vs. Bodo fistfight in Kokrajhar and elsewhere have really nothing to do with the "Muslim" factor. Even if Bangladesh were overwhelmingly Hindu, we would have had a similar problem, just less violent. To make such profound conclusions, one needs to fit some known theories to human behavior. In this direction, here is my (not-so-lame) attempt at using thermodynamic principles for violence and chaos.

First Law: The amount of violence in an essentially isolated society (dU) is given by T dS - P dV, where T is a measure of misgovernance in the territory, S is a measure of distinction between identities, P is a measure of the combativeness of peoples, and V is the amount of foraging space for the various contestants.

So you see, the only thing that will change is P (hopefully the level of combativeness between Hindu Bengalis and Bodos may not be as high as that between Muslim Bengalis/Bangladeshis and Bodos with an overwhelming religious slant).

In the same vein, here is an equivalent form of the Second Law (just to complete things): People continue to self-divide themselves into sub-identities. And if there is none, there will be a need to invent one.

I could come up with a Third Law that connects the God phenomenon with identities and sub-identities, and thus close the circle, but lets just say enough political bullshit for the day!

Reflections on the Games

1) Prior to the Games, I did not give any chances for either Abhinav Bindra, Vijender Kumar or Sushil Kumar to repeat their Beijing performance and win any medal. This was because Bindra-saab was too busy giving interviews on extraneous happenings in sports instead of fine-tuning his skillset, Vijender was too busy modeling on the ramp, and Sushil was too busy on MTV Roadies and needed three attempts to qualify for the Games. To his credit, Sushil did make me eat humble-pie, which is wonderful news. Even if that pie had been served on a golden plate.

2) Of the medal winners at the 2008 Games, only Bindra-saab was a Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna winner (the Indian equivalent of the Nobel for sporting achievement) prior to the Games. Vijender and Sushil were post-facto awarded the Khel Ratna after the 2008 Games once the Mary Kom issue was settled. In this edition, only Yogeshwar Dutt and Vijay Kumar were unknowns/newbies to the scene. It is fair to say that most keen sports-watchers had no idea of these two medal winners prior to they winning the medals. Going down from 66% to 33% in terms of a priori lack of recognition, one gets the impression that the Indian scheme of spotting talent is getting better. Now, if only such a honing of diamonds happened with equal pace in science and technology, life would be so much better for the academics out there. Sadly, there are no Olympics for academics and one has to trod on the beaten path for god knows how long before a breakthrough filters in.

3) Looking back, the event that started it all was Leander Paes' epic bronze match against Fernando Meligeni. Seeing Paes standing aside Agassi and Bruguera and breaking the 16 year medal drought, it was coincident that all this happened in the post-liberalization and new India period. While the man needs to be given all the credit for being the fore-runner to the current gleeful times, one also needs to note that his record sixth Olympics was left in tatters by the one controversy that hogged the limelite and has set Indian tennis back by many a level. On this note, dirty linen can now be washed in public given that it is time to understand what really happened. While Mahesh and Leander were not on great terms ever since their first breakup in the early 2000s, the current fistfighting goes back to the Davis Cup matchplay against Uzbekistan in Feb. 2008 (Linky).

With Paes as the playing captain (a surprise given that Indian Davis Cup team of the 90s had almost always had Naresh Kumar or Jaideep Mukherjea as the non-playing captain) and Rohan Bopanna's singles spot assured as the man-in-form, it was a question of finding the right second singles player. With Prakash Amritraj being the leading "Indian" on the ATP charts and a newbie by the name Somdev Devvarman just arriving from NCAA events, it was only reasonable to expect Prakash to be pitted in the second singles match especially given that Prakash had soundly beaten Dennis Istomin twice before. What did complicate the matter was that Prakash had picked a wrist injury that forced him to withdraw from the Challenger event the previous week and there were reports of a stomach bug to boot. Prakash however claimed that it was too cold in China and he withdrew only because he wanted to play the Davis Cup more. Prakash did cite the doubles match he played in China as evidence, but this did nt wash quite well as Prakash had lost the match and there was no convincing proof of no injury. Forced to make a choice, Paes as the captain decided to field an undercooked Somdev over Prakash, who duly got trampled on his debut Davis Cup match, Prakash was left fuming on how he was fit for the match and he found able support in Mahesh (a fellow Tamil Christian and comrade in arms given that it was a shot against Paes).

This back and forth culminated in Leander's accusation that Prakash was not committed enough for a nationalist cause that set Prakash and dad Vijay fuming. With Bopanna clawing a magical five set loss after leading by two sets, it was again a case of Somdev vs. Prakash. This time, Prakash got the nod ahead of Somdev and he went on to truly set the stage on fire by leading India to a 3-2 win. While, ideally the nationalist cause rhetoric might have been left behind in another scenario as a heat of the moment accusation, it divided the camp vertically into the pro-Leander set (which eventually became a set of one as more and more people started growing uncomfortable with Leander wearing the uber-nationalist flag on his chest -- for which of course he makes the best case), and an anti-Leander lobby/set that puts business ahead of jingoism and jargon-ism. In fact, Leander and Mahesh tried to avoid each other in the 2011-12 period. Aiding in this transformation was the Globosport event marketing enterprise, run by Mahesh, which went through some massive business changes as the manager of the company had quit and Mahesh had to bring his sister to the helm over his ex-wife (now divorced). All this ensured that Mahesh had absolutely no time for tennis and this did show in his recent track record in doubles. If there was any justice in the world, the men's doubles combination would have been the Leander-Bopanna and the mixed doubles would have been Mahesh-Sania. The wrong teams went to London and duly exited as soon as they landed.

In terms of the future, things are at abysmal low. The sense of camaraderie in the team has evaporated and it would not be unfair to demand that Leander, Mahesh and Rohan all retire right away. Yes, including Rohan Bopanna. I think it is time to move on from this bunch and put down the expectations on any World Group appearance for a few years.

4) That historic low brings us to hockey. Noone knows what happened. I most definitely did not watch the matches, so I cannot comment on what went wrong. It was not a bad team as people now make it out to be, it was the very same team that had won in Delhi. The very same team hammered Pakistan in the first match of the World Cup. What happened most likely was a collective loss of faith in one's abilities. Happens many a time in sports, one thing leads to another and you never recover, much like the choking problem of the South African cricket team. When the expectations are sky-high, and much rides on your performance, everyone chokes at times. Did Coach Nobbs' comment spark this meltdown? Or whatever it was, let us hope that Hockey India pays a price and resign en masse. Too fat a chance that is happening.

For all the clamor calls from the concerned citizens of India on demoting hockey from the national sport, the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs in fact replied to a RTI query by a school kid last month that hockey indeed is not our national sport! Whatever it is, hockey belongs to a generation of standing up and fighting the Brits. For a sad bunch of Indians for whom nationalism begins with the Shakti blasts and the Kargil War, it would make no difference whether Henry Rebello was forced to make an impromptu jump after a medal ceremony that forced him to eke out a sprain or whether Jaipal Singh Munda faced the same taunts that forced Gandhi to fight the rampant racism and bigotry in South Africa. It would nt make absolutely any difference as to whether the East Yorkshire Regiment got trampled by Mohun Bagan or if the shoe-less wonders lost the bronze playoff in Melbourne 1956 to Yugoslavia. Or if the Asian Games was an idea conceived in India. We perhaps lost that moral authority when we let the Pakistanis invent the idea of Champions Trophy. As they say, trample on your own history and recommit the mistakes of the past. But I guess, one has to choose to be anachronistic these days and take the Chetan Bhagat dictum that all that the youngistan brigade wants is a good job and a girlfriend. Sadly, the news that Indian football has sunk to its lowest would not have been missed much in the frenzy of the Games.

5) Of the medal winners, I did expect Mary Kom to get one, but I expected a gold. I was not too keen on Saina getting one, however, especially given that she still has nt apologized for the passport controvery of 2009 in the lead-up days to the Thai and Indonesian Opens. But whatever it is, I do believe that these have been India's first women medals. While I do not want to forget Karnam Malleswari's feat at Sydney 2000, I have a sad bad story to tell regarding the Indian weightlifting program and none of the medal winners from the past events have been clean in my eyes (most definitely not Krishnan Madaswamy who set the Commonwealth Games podium aflame).

That brings us to the sad story of the 4x400 athletes: Tiana Mary Thomas, Ashwini Akkunji, Mandeep Kaur, Manjit Kaur, Sini Jose, Priyanka Panwar, and Jauna Murmu. In fact, Manjit Kaur "retired" from athletics with immediate effect and kept her Punjab Police job instead of submitting her blood sample to NADA. Only in India will one be able to keep a job obtained via the sports quota, even after legally refusing to prove that the said athlete has been clean. Only in India will someone cherished as the new face of tier-2 India as Ashwini was touted in her breakthrough year disappoint us and break our hearts that, "tier-2 or tier-1, there are infinitely many short-cuts in life" is the only phrase left in our salty mouths.

It is an open secret that Indians dope and weightlifting and athletics are the most criminal of sports in terms of getting caught by WADA/NADA stipulations. And the fact that Indians dope in sports only reflects on our movie stars who dope to build muscle mass overnight. Yes, hello, I mean you Aamir Khan of Ghajini fame, Shah Rukh Khan of "I want to best Aamir at his game", I mean Kamal Hassan who put on muscle mass at the grand old age of 47 for Aalavandhan when people half his age have a problem producing enough testosterone
to put on muscle mass, I mean Surya and every other two bit actors in *-wood who have put on muscle mass overnight. That is not a clean chit that those athletes from the US and China who pass the drug test are clean, but an indictment that Indians are lousy even in cheating and leave it so obvious to those who can see, and yet want to get away with such actions.

6) That brings me to the hope of the Games. As for archery, I may need to dust my 1992 Sportstar center-page poster featuring Limba Ram titled, "Aim Bold, Target Gold." All said and done, Deepika Kumari has just shown that Jharkhand is/will be known for something other than MSD. Will a state that could not host the National Games even after four postponements get its act together and be inspired by this remarkable woman's story and bring the polarized sections of society together? God knows, but marang gomke will be watching from his grave and heaving a sigh of relief when that happens. Now if Shibu Soren gets the idea....

7) That leaves three of our sports at absolute pits -- hockey, football and tennis. I have no idea whether I should rejoice at winning six medals or not. But this is a new India, a brave India, which has its own sense of nationalist outpourings and candle-light moments. I live in the days gone by, I will revisit my albums of the 1928-1936 gold winners. On a positive note, India were in the hunt for a medal from the second day to the last. On a negative note, the attention of the Opening Ceremony was hogged by a typical Indian act: cutting the line and snatching the limelite of others. To top that act of lack of sense, the red-sweatered lady was touted as beautiful (no, she was just simply fat!).

8) As for UK's shambolic preparation, the less said the better. I never heard a pipsqueak from Perry Crosswhite of the CGOC fame on how bad the preparations were and the snafus that were tolerated. Rest assured, all the medals won by the UK can only assuage the honor and dignity quotient of the Brits. Most Games end up being a Crow's Nest and this will not be very far off. Now let us hope that Suresh Kalmadi does not get any new ideas on hosting this extravaganza in India. India is not at a stage to organize such leeching events for another 100 years, may be never.

More later...

PS: If the English and the flow resembles Chetan Bhagat's that is intentional :)

Letter to Prof. Sumit Ganguly

Hi Prof. Sumit,
I am a .... I happened to listen to your teleconference talk at U. Arizona.

While you had addressed a few key issues that will be of prominence in the next few years in the Indian subcontinent, I believe more of the "unpredictables" will what will dictate the future trajectory of the subcontinent. This is because the "predictables" such as political paralysis (aka) coalition politics, economic inter-dependencies, parleying on the fractious borders, identity conflicts of various stripes, etc., shall continue into the foreseeable future. To someone born in 1980 (such as me), these transactions seem to have lasted for as long as India has existed and with the bureaucratic polity in the picture and that which shall continue into the near future, I see no dramatic changes barring a few twists and turns. These few twists and turns are most likely going to be forced upon the bureaucrats because of the unpredictables rather than because of a systemic shift in how the bureaucracy promulgates vision documents and policies based on them.

1) On top of this list in my opinion will be the deluge of cross-border migrants, the consequent demographic shifts and identity-based tensions that this will engender. This will be true of Bangladesh where the encroachment of areable land by rising sea levels and increased soil salinity along with the pressures of a rising population and lack of adequate potable water supplies will make the pre-1971 scenario a walk in the park. This will also be true of Bhutan and Nepal where the cultivability of land was never a strong point to begin with. A mirror image scenario of rising sea levels will also unfold in Maldives and parts of Sri Lanka. Then there is the case of an impossible to fathom Pakistani implosion (if not in physical existence, but in terms of hope and aspirations for the peoples) which is orders of magnitude more difficult than the other neighbors. Last, internal migration of people in India from the coasts will also put pressure on the interior. As the "big brother" (at least in vision, if not in capabilities) of the region, the responsibility will fall on India to accommodate these economic migrants without pushing them into the sea or letting them perish. In my opinion, the challenge of accommodating such new identities without fixing them in a zero-sum game with existing identities will be the single-most important challenge occupying the minds of bureaucrats in the next fifty to hundred years. The contours of the Indian equivalent of the New Deal will determine how India visualizes itself and how India will be pitted against other contenders for the battle of the hearts and minds.

2) In terms of identity matters, we already see a rising middle class in India that is not afraid to assert itself in terms of identity matters. Disparagingly called "Internet Hindus" by various sections of the media, they are only a reflection of the enormous contradictions in the state of affairs on the ground in India today. While you mentioned the rising Hindu-Muslim discords under a possible NDA/BJP regime, they themselves only reflect the gross situation on the ground. A Hindu-Muslim discord need not be invented (let alone by a BJP/NDA regime), it already exists. The BJP/NDA can fish in troubled waters because such troubled waters exist. In independent India's existence so far, the existence of such a discord has often been denied even in the light of massive evidences to the contrary (e.g., decline of Hindu population in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Direct Action Day riots, Naokhali, Moplah riots, etc.). Often times, the discord is proclaimed to be the imagination of the Hindutvavadis (e.g., whitewashing of the Mughal/Sultanate regimes and how it was a rule of law for the Hindus). And many times, it has been soothed by sops of different kinds to both parties (Shah Bano vs. Mandal politics), or has been ignored completely. How does the polity intend to create a smooth atmosphere for its subsections by denial, fabrication and ignoring? As one of my mentors used to say, "Fundamental difficulties are invariant under reformulation," and the fundamental difficulty of ignoring the presence of a 800 lb. gorilla in the room of Hindu-Muslim discord will not help us find an answer to this problem.

And as India slowly unshackles itself out of the enormous economic trough of the last few hundred years, the dichotomies and contradictions of the secular establishment that gets the goat of this rising middle class will become a major problem that has to be assuaged lest it be channelized into destructive forces. While the Indian political class has showed a tremendous ability to defuse tensions of many different types, whether it can rise up to the challenge of coming to terms with its own self-contradictions in a self-referential way is something to be seen.

3) Identity in itself is a vestige for commandeering the limited resources under a cloud of fairness. Accommodating the new arrivals as well as the existing set will require a scaling up of resources: education, employment opportunities, water, energy, food -- all out of thin air. We already see the contours of an inter-connected subcontinental electricity grid. Slowly, but steadily, a not-so well-mapped economic union also seems likely to emerge. Will these unions be sufficient to scale up the resources on the scale that is needed by the new India? If they are not scaled up sufficiently faster, we will see identity-based politics that will lead to conflict situations that cannot be avoided.

More than the predictables, it is these unpredictables that will matter the most.

thanks,