A wake-up call for chess in India

The chess Olympiad has just concluded and if there was a better wake-up call for chess in India, I am not aware of any. Much like Indian tennis, cricket, football and hockey today, we are at a cross-roads in terms of climbing out of the rut established by presumptions imposed by past performances that seemed to suggest a long period of stability and consistently great performances even as the ranks get re-filled with greenhorns.

The Open category of the Olympiad saw a 13th seeded Indian team finish 35th, way way down than what the paper shows about the talent in the team. On the top board, Krishnan Sasikiran seems to have caught an Anand bug and drew many games with an occasional one-off loss to throw away the last two years of ELO rating climb. Notwithstanding the fact that the top board is a misery for many as it pits them against players in the same ball-park or worser with a higher chance of losing points in case of draws (in fact, players tend to lose points even if they win as the ELO system is skewed against the top-rated players), unlike the lower boards, Sasikiran had a tournament to forget. The performance of others except Abhijeet Gupta (Abhijeet gained 13 ELO points) was no different.

It is surprising that Sasikiran was persisted at the top board through his string of draws and losses, when a different strategy of giving him a break and a vertical shift fall-back option that would have brought in G. N. Gopal could have helped. In fact, a simple one game shift might have worked wonders as I now explain. At the beginning of the fourth round, I would have expected a break for Abhijeet following a round-robin break system, instead one saw a break for Gopal; but that is explainable as India played strong teams in the US, England and Israel in rounds 4-6 and putting Gopal in the mix would have been suicidal. But common-sense would have dictated that Gopal would have been in the fourth board against Argentina, Serbia and Georgia, he stood aside in the match against Argentina. Sasi neatly pulled a time-pressure loss against the Serbian top board in the 8th round and while one can post-facto claim "I said so!", it is also common-sense that even a one game break can help in stressful events such as the Olympiads.

On the women's front, while all things look rosy as the 6th seeded Indian team ended up fourth, this clouds the fact that Eesha Karavade and Mary Ann Gomes pulled off massive ELO rating losses while Tania, Harika and Soumya more than compensated for their losses. On more than one occasion, Eesha's failure at the second board was compensated by Tania saving the team with a fine win. The only times when Tania failed, India lost to the strong Chinese and Russian teams (both shared the top spot). While the women need to be appreciated for their strong performance, one would also tend to look at their performance from a global perspective rather than an one-off showing at the Olympiad. In the same vein, the fact that the Indian team finished behind China, Viet Nam, Phillipines and even Bangladesh (in Asia) has not got to be exaggerated. Olympiads are a different kettle of fish than regular Category 18+ events, and essentially who dares wins. There is nothing to be carried away as a universal lesson for everyone and some of the top teams have pulled on through bad Olympiads.

Nevertheless, one has to look at things in perspective before jumping up or down. India claims to be the home to 27 GMs and 76 FIDE Masters, however this fact hides more about Indian chess than it reveals. In the frenzy over Anand's rise as the World Champion, it is remarkable that the carcass left behind in his wake has been unnoticed. While it has always been true that chess is a youngistan sport, dramatic improvement in learning technology (like the rise of the Cray X-MP, Fritz, and their clones) has only shortened the life-span of top-quality chess players and left the oldistan dream about the game at an amateur level than get into the vagaries of time-trouble and opening/end-game preparation. The fact that two of the oldest of the oldies -- Anand and Gelfand -- kicked each other in the teeth repeatedly for the ultimate prize makes it not mere an anachronism, but also tells us tales about what separates Anand and Gelfand from the rest, and how they cannot be held as beacons to understand the performance of mere mortals. Anand and Gelfand along with Ivanchuk and Kramnik would bag the joint prize for the chess equivalent of the marathon, but we only have the Oscar to honor these great men.

In terms of a chess player's "rise", there is often a steady rise in the junior-youngistan period (think Anand pre-87 Junior World Cup win) followed by an even bigger rise as the players get aware of complicated strategies and generally get better at their game (87-90 of Anand). This is often the period where the two GM norms (interspersed with some near-misses) and the magical 2500 ELO rating are achieved. This is followed by a phase where growth is more personal rather than institutionalized. At this stage, how far one can climb is left to how hard a person trains, how much new stuff he/she can digest and imbibe, how one treats setbacks in terms of the inevitable ELO rating downslide (and even a dramatic fall after one disaster of an outing), how one treats health issues and in general, whether one becomes a chess couch potato or a well-groomed individual^1 with a life away from the 64 squares.

As a not-so-typical example, Anand climbed in terms of ELO ratings from 1991-97, won two Chess Oscars and then went downhill following the match-up against Karpov, stayed put in the lower rungs till 2002-03, and then climbed again from 2003-08 winning four more Oscars, remained flat till 2010 and started going down after that. This is the period that saw the clamor for the coronation of Magnus Carlsen, even though much of Carlsen's climb had been exaggerated by the ELO rating inflation of the new era. More typically, a significant majority of the GMs grow, plateau, taper out and some even fall down dramatically. While it is inevitable that everyone plateaus and falls fown, the only thing to note is how quickly this eventuality happens.

What is the state of India's 27 GMs today? One can neatly partition these 27 people into three categories. The first club consists of the pre-2000 club: Anand, Barua, Thipsay and Kunte. Of these, of course Anand is the only one^2 left standing tall. The next phase is the 2000-2005 club which consists of Sasikiran, Harikrishna, Koneru Humpy, Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Tejas Bakre and Sandipan Chanda. While the first three are top contenders in the men's and women's section today, the other three have fallen out of growth. In fact, S. S. Ganguly is more famous for being one of Anand's seconds than for his own game. The post-2005 period (and continuing) has seen 17 GMs with four crowned in 2006, one in 2007, two in 2008, two more in 2009, three in 2010, and two each in 2011 and 2012. While this seems to suggest that growth has been steady, a closer look suggests that that is not the case.

Only Abhijeet Gupta and Magesh Chandran's ELO ratings are still climbing substantially, whereas Parimarjan Negi, B. Adhiban, S. P. Sethuraman, Lalith Babu and Deepan Chakravarthy can be claimed to be in the ball-park of growing give and take the various heartbreaks, near-misses and also-rans. For many such as G. N. Gopal and Dronavilli Harika, the trajectory resembles more of plateau-ing than growing and for the rest, it has come down substantially off the top of their charts to claim any sort of growth. That shows that only half of the 2000-2005 era and 1/3rd of the 17 new GMs are in the process of "growing" even within six to ten years of their arrival on the big stage. The pipeline seems to be leaky with not many new big prospects (except for Vaibhav Suri, Bhakti Kulkarni, Ivana Maria Furtado, etc.) in the lurch.

For a long time, the post-Anand rise phase led to a massive advertisement campaign by the AICF that India is the new powerhouse of chess. The massive rise in the Grandmaster ranks and the geographical spread of the new Grandmasters away from traditional bastions such as TN and WB to new centers such as Pune, Bangalore, Kochi, Baroda, Goa, Delhi, etc., also ensured that this advertisement seemed credible and the rise seemed plausible. But then every effort at advertising has to be matched by a grassroots-based reachout program that is commensurate with the claims made. Further, one has to realize that even as we stand, others (including other Asian teams such as Phillipines, Viet Nam, China as well as Eastern European teams and the US) move on and it is not India's growing middle-class population alone that will sustain a growing chess base. What will sustain it are: general chess education efforts and outreach that chess is indeed a game i) worthy of professional pursuit and ii) worthy of state support (hint hint at TN and Gujarat), iii) a proportionate increase in industry-sponsored chess events at the Category 15-21+ levels, iv) sponsorship money that will allow players to fly around to chess centers to gain ELO points and thus close a circle and productive pipeline of Grassroots --> FIDE Master --> (WIM) --> IM --> (WGM) --> GM --> Super GM --> World Championship contender potential --> World Champion --> Give back to the game at the grassroots level in India and the world.

Much of the onus for this lies with the AICF as Anand has done his fair bit for the prosperity of the game in India. It is time that D. V. Sundar & co. put behind the mess caused by the fractious l'affaire-Koneru Ashok and bring in various age-group events on an aggressive scale. Apart from the age-group events, we need a system that will allow people to fight past their potential and look at a peer club that is competitive and helpful. At the end of the day, we all have have to have paychecks to sustain life and this is not going to change if one is a chess player. Of course, a very few like Anand can live their Aloha-dreams, but for the rest of us, it is regular programming. It is also time that Tata Steel look at India for a Category 19+ tournament than blowing their zero-sum moneys at Wijk Aan Zee. Finally, it would also be fruitful if Indians look at fellow Indians such as Ivana Furtado as their own, instead of batting for Anish Giri -- a Hindu in just name and a Dutch citizen to boot -- who knows little about India than Anand.

Footnotes:
1) Since not much is institutionalized, a peer group with which one can bounce off ideas and sharpen skill-sets helps. However, it should also be noted that many superstars such as Anand, Ivanchuk, Kramnik and even Carlsen had/have not many around them in terms of support-cast (apart from close family members) and were/are in a planet of their own.
2) Since a 2500 ELO rating need not be maintained to hold on to a GM norm, what one encounters is a pale shadow of a former GM when one sees a Dibyendu Barua or a Praveen Thipsay or an Abijit Kunte today.

Politically Incorrect: Part Duh

1) Any organization that has not gone extinct over a 100+ year period must be doing something right in terms of organization theory, whether it is retaining the most productive employees, or the biggest contributors/stars/power-brokers, or the best man/woman-managers, or the biggest salesmen/women. While this truism is easily grasped when someone mentions technology companies such as IBM, GE, Ford, etc., that same truism escapes when one talks of the Congress Party or Hinduism. Despite fond wishes of many in the wild world that is out there, neither organization has gone extinct. And neither looks imminent to go extinct anytime soon despite fond hopes/wishes/fears of many. All that remarkable cussing aimed at the Congress Party in one's angst ignores the simple fact that the Congress Party is home to hundreds of years of top-notch management experience that is decentralized so that Barabasi's famous "take a few nodes out and you are safe and dry" result will not kick in.

The Congress Party has not shied away from hitting out at people it has deemed to have crossed a certain limit, whether they be Sheikh Abdullah or the Sikhs or based out of Bhagalpur or out of Nellie. If Narendra Modi is a monster for ruling Gujarat during the Godhra-riots and doing nothing (1169 dead), by the same yardstick, here is a list of major riots under the Congress Party rule:

1969 – Gujarat, Congress Government, Jagan Mohan Reddy Commission, 660 dead.
1983 – Nellie, Congress Government, Tribhuvan Prasad Tiwari Commission, 2191 dead.
1984 – Delhi, Congress Government, Nanavati Commission, 3296 dead.
1989 – Bhagalpur, Congress Government, R. C. Prasad & Shamsul Hasan Commission, 1070 dead.
1992 – Mumbai, Congress Government, Srikrishna Commission, 900 dead.

Clearly, the repeated electoral triumphs in Assam shows that the Congress Party has been "forgiven" if electoral mandate is the modus operandi of legitimacy in a democracy. That trend is true not only in Assam, but also in Punjab and Bombay where we have seen the Congress Party come back to power time and again. It cannot be rationally argued that the Congress Party is an aberrant deviant foisted on the people by all-pervading external powers when it is a fact that it has been repeatedly accepted by the people of the state independent of the fact that whether people had better choices or otherwise. A simple lesson that the political Opposition can learn is to realize that it is not sufficient to fight a battle, but it is necessary to fight a battle sophisticatedly. Whatever the Congress Party lacks (leaders or otherwise), it does not lack cunning. In short, the BJP needs to transform itself from being like the Indian cricket team of the early-90s and do a Dada's Lord's dance, at least for the sake of the health of a still-nascent democracy. If the noisy rank and file and the empathizers/sympathizers club of the Party are any indication, the Party seems to have less brain than bravado, less rationality than cries of victimhood, and less brawn than is needed to become an automatic choice for the ruling party.

2) Corruption has been the number 1 issue that this "cunning" Opposition has tried to tackle the Congress Party on. While that plank displays the bankruptcy of ideas in the Opposition camp, the fact that corruption has become the number 1 issue amongst the Gen. Y shows how remarkably callow and lead-able the new generation is/can be. Let me take a polar plank and claim that corruption is NOT the number 1 problem in India. And fixing corruption is NOT going to fix India. The problem with the current state of India is not corruption because corruption is rife in most places that thrive economically today: whether it is called "lobbying" (the US), or "party politics" (China), or "the price to conduct business" (Singapore and West Asian states) or any other nuanced phrase (much of Europe and the UK) that embellishes a simple fact that overheads is a part of life, academic or otherwise. India (or any other superpower for that matter) cannot rid itself of corruption in a time-bound manner because corruption will exist till the last corrupt man/woman exists and that will be true till the last man/woman exists. While a philosophical viewpoint that everyone is corrupt is a truism, what India needs to focus on is to rid the simpler/least economical aspects of life from corruption in a time-bound manner. While few Indians can see the real impact of 2G or the assorted set of mining-related scams or Commonwealth Games scam, most of the poor can feel the pinch of having to bribe to file a FIR, having to bribe to get a driver/commercial license, having to bribe to get a ration card/passport/UID, etc. "India against corruption" would be wise to rename themselves "India for inflating away corruption from the common-man" even if the acronym would be a nice ii-a-cc which in the classical rendition of Madras Tamil would be uttered as "ai-ai-ah-chee-chee".

3) That brings us to that other successful "organization" in my first point: Hinduism. While many religious folks would find branding of Hinduism as an organization offensive, the very fact that it has survived for hundreds of years of Buddhist/Jaina polity followed by a few hundred years of Sultanate and British rule means that fears of complete annihilation and destruction are a-bit-over-the-top. To cut to the chase, Hinduism has survived because of favorable demographics and when push comes to shove, most Hindus fight a battle to the death (even if they are members of the Congress Party). In that sense, the Hindus are no exceptions to any other set of religious folks: most religions fight to the death when it comes to existential questions, or else they will perish. Even the peace-loving Buddhist/Jainist traditions are no exception to this Darwinian rule. The eternal claims to victimhood of many Gen. X/Y Hindus display more about the person claiming to be a victim than about the idea to which he/she subscribes to. That does not mean that one should sit idle if one sees a blatantly shameful act that exploits the state's obligation to certain rights for everyone, but one should learn to educate themselves in terms of cunning, whether it is legal or otherwise.

The problem with Tamil Nadu...

... is really nothing. Really. For long, I have desisted from taking a potshot at the contradictions that make Tamil Nadu lest it open a can of worms for those with a gargantuan axe to grind to use these potshots in scenarios that suit them the best. But there is a time when such considerations fall away and one has to stand up and say things as one sees it.

The problem with Tamil Nadu is not the Tamils, but the more-Tamil-than-the-Tamils who need to prostitute the beautiful^[1] language. Prostitute, they must to spin their own wheels of acceptability. Whether it has been the newly-converted Muslims or of late the converted Christians or the divorced Dalits, Tamil society has by deliberate acts of social primordiality put Tamil identity over caste identity and far down the totem-pole, religious identity. And the Tamil-uber-alles has served very well for the new immigrants, the new converts, the new [whatever] as well as it has served Tamil Nadu. One reason why "new" immigrants such as Rajnikanth or M. G. Ramachandran or Vijayakanth or Khusboo or why Christians such as Vijay or Vikram can aspire to be the top-echelon of the movie industry is that Tamil society is open to diversity, preferably undeclared. And this openness keeps a tap on "talent", building hopes in the next Rajnikanth or the next Vadivelu somewhere in some deep corner of the state. And in return for this openness, it extracts a price: Tamil-uber-alles, even if it means a fistfight against your erstwhile state, what is good for your community, etc. That tiger can be mounted by anyone, even the national parties that are missing from the state. But as my friend Sun Tzu once said, "those know how to mount a tiger, know how to unmount it [wisp of the beard]..."

The my-caste-uber-alles part of the proposition is also why a Cheeka or an Anand can get only so far. Not to worry, neither of them care a whit about what the establishment dishes out to them. That also explains why the Vanniyars and the Mukkulathhors need a Saiva-Vellalar to broker peace. Nevertheless, for long, it has been fashionable among the Brahmin elite to cast stones at Periyar as much of the Brahmin community sees his legacy with the tinted glasses of poonal aruppu, loss of status quo, fall from the pedestal, out-migration, and what not. Eighty years (and more) past the day when Thalai-Kaveri broke, I believe the Brahmin community shall do well to move on from long-forgotten "wrongs" and stick to whichever state/country they are now an indivisible part of. The Brahmins of Tamil Nadu neither get the "help" from self-appointed representatives of the Brahmin community from elsewhere nor have the demographic advantage to wield a veecharuvaal to the end.

Short of that, Tamil Nadu and Tamil society (and that includes the Brahmins now domiciled there) owe a considerable amount of gratitude to the ideas of Periyar and most important of all, the Self-Respect Movement. One understands Tamil Nadu if one understands what suya-mariyaathai means. Of course, suya-mariyaathai is not the same as NTR's atma-gauravam, nor is it the same as any form of swabhimaan peddled today in the form of neo-corruption battles. The primary reason for this distinction is the historical context which is not re-creatable and the impact the movement has had on the Tamil subconsciousness somuchso that most Tamils know what suya-mariyaathai is even though (I can bet my top$) they may not be able to define what it means to them. The closest definition I have seen is that of Abe Maslow's: "psychological health is not possible unless the essential core of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by oneself."

And therein lies the crux of the problem, self-respect needs two to tango even though the self-referential nature of the definition defies such an imagination. It needs one to respect him/herself and it needs the "Other" to realize that any transaction occurs on an equal footing. Unfortunately, the "Other" often does not understand the Faustian bargain or worse, mis-interprets the bargain as a commodity that has been bought. Suffice it to say that you have lost me on a moral ground if I have to duel you in an interminable fight for what is right. This has happened too often in the past, whether it be the unending delays in the promulgation of the Official Language Act, the complete ignorance of Sarkaria Commission recommendations, water disputes, etc., that a long-held grievance profile against the Central Government has been nursed and watered by both parties to a mammoth scale. Thus, it is no surprise that the Central Government has no clue as to what gets the Tamils so mad at what happened in Sri Lanka.

What happened and continues to happen in Sri Lanka is a religious war in the garb of a linguistic identity issue. The fact that Tamil-speaking Muslims and the Hindu and converted Christian Tamils are not on the same page ensures that this is no longer a language dispute. What Tamil Nadu has been able to avoid (an inter-religious war by any other means) by putting the language identity on top cannot be/has not been replicated in Singapore or Sri Lanka or Malaysia or Fiji or Mauritius or Guyana. Of course, it helps in places like Mauritius, Fiji or Guyana that the Tamil community is not the first among equals in terms of demographics. The "success" of such a Tamil-uber-alles should be credited where it is due: Self-Respect Movement and Periyar. And those asking for the death of the Dravidian movement shall also invite the needless problems of Christian and Islamist assertion that somehow have missed (in terms of scale) from Tamil Nadu. While one can blame the fact that Arumuga Naavalar preceded Periyar and his ideas, the state-of-affairs can be attributed to the simpler fact that even Rama Setu could not make Sri Lankan Tamil society as diverse as the Tamil Nadu society. You can attribute that to the contiguity of the landmass or whatever, but the Tamils did take to the sea more often than the Brahminical version that became the order of the day in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would allow one to believe.

All things given, good riddance to Prabhakaran and Kittu. But it is also a fact that they were the only ones left standing, much because they were the only ones who succeeded in killing everyone else. It is amply clear that the post-Prabhakaran phase has seen an enervated Tamil polity closely trailed by a maximalist Sinhalese nightmare. While it is only a matter of time before the Tamils shall start the new war, as religious wars never end till the total decimation of one party to the dispute, it is also not surprising that the strategic depth in these times comes from Tamil Nadu. Of course, it is only logical to expect that Tamil Nadu, or rather, the more-Tamil-than-the-Tamil crowd that wields moral and pseudo-political clout, muddies the waters more. One has to be from a strange land to expect the common man from Tamil Nadu to disagree completely with the antics of the more-Tamil-than-the-Tamil crowd. While the pendulum has not completely swung to the other extreme, the vacuum permitted by the officious busibodies that thrive the policy circle can only push it to the other extreme. It will not be surprising if new neo-LTTE camps come up within the state with the State Government looking askance and at the same time throwing helpless lullabies that will put Billy Joel to shame.

The solutions to the mess are simple. First, recognize that Sri Lanka is not a Tamil-Sinhalese problem, but a Hindu+Christian vs. Buddhist problem with the Muslims siding with whoever shall be the winner in an uncomfortable yet agreeable stalemate all the while polishing the demographic part of the equation over time. Second, any war requires favorable demographics to be won and the Hindus do not have the immediate dominance on this matter especially with the out-migration that has happened over the last two decades and the wariness that has set in the post-LTTE phase. Nevertheless, the other party to this dispute sees the Hindus as an extension of India, and not as an isolated one. The Buddhist (and Jaina) chronicles are clear on how the Hindu society regained pre-eminence in the post-Bhakti phase, so an innocent sense of eternal victimhood on the part of Hindus helps noone. Third, there is no solution to this problem except the complete decimation of either party or a two-state solution that ignores the "Other" altogether. Religious wars do not have anything but extremal Nash equilibria.

Fourth, suitors from across the globe will not remain silent if one party succeeds or nears succeeding in decimating the other genocidically. The only one standing in the way of these suitors is of course India. Fifth, there can be no working solution without the involvement of Tamil polity in India with the official blessings of the Government of India. If there are no official blessings, the polity will threaten to do its own bidding. Putting down such rabid dogs out of their misery will be a painful task as time goes on and the Central Government can fast-forward to such an eventuality by taking down the house, right now, right here. It will help us save a lot of blood, and needless to say in India, blood is a cheap commodity with the only advise that I can give is to be selfish and take care of one's life with the self-respect that life deserves. Sixth, all this means that there can be no solution outside India. That possibility is inevitable^[2] as Serendip will sink slowly into the Indian Ocean and re-create the reverse Vijaya journey. However, when that journey does happen, let it be known that the transactions will not be in the form of Sinhalese-uber-alles.

Footnote [1]: Of course, one will know the fact that Tamil is beautiful if one is literate in not necessarily Sanghathh or Tholkappiya or Kambhan Tamil, but in early 20th century Tamil --- not of the esoteric and ethereal kind such as those of Bhaarathiyar or Bhaarathithaasan or Surathaa, but of the stuff that made "Manonmaneeyam" Sundaram Pillai, Mu. Varadaraasan, Ma. Po. Sivagnanam, P. V. Akhilandam, etc, famous.

[2]: It takes no brain to realize that the Indian subcontinent will be the most affected by greenhouse effect and the worst prepared for such an eventuality. It also takes no brain to realize that "Others" know of our eventual/inevitable state much better than we do. Of course, I heard it in a State Department-sponsored talk first with maps on what a 1 cm level rise would be like, etc., that would put the Census commissioner of India to shame.