The taming of IPL
by
AJ Philip |
There are better ways of ferreting out the truth
SUCCESS has many parents but failure is an orphan. One is reminded of this saying as the end game begins for Indian Premier League (IPL) Chairman and Commissioner Lalit Modi. Until a fortnight ago, he was the toast of the rich and the powerful, the glamorous and the glitterati. But in one fell swoop he lost it all and, today, he finds himself in the doghouse for betraying confidence and for exceeding his brief.
By paying scant regard to the wisdom of not throwing stones at others when you yourself are in a glasshouse, Modi has invited upon himself the fury of his one-time friends that could end up as his nemesis. When early this month Modi tweeted on twitter.com about the shareholdings in the IPL Kochi franchise, he did not realise he was breaking a code of conduct that could be a catalyst for events that could even sweep him away.
One such event is slated for April 26, a day after the last match of IPL’s fourth season is over, when IPL’s governing board would meet in defiance of Modi’s wish to have it a week later. He may quote chapter and verse from the IPL bylaws but at the end of the day he knows he is in a supreme minority and can hardly ward off any unpleasant decision the board may inflict on him.
Modi’s days as the jet-setting super boss of cricket are, in any case, over even if the April 26 meeting takes a lenient view of his “wrong-doings” that brought IPL on the radars of the Income Tax Department and the Enforcement Directorate. One by one, his friends in political and business circles have left him to fend for himself, a lesson for anyone who thinks success will be a constant companion under all circumstances.
Such is the fallout of Modi’s original sin that Parliament could not transact any business worth the name for a whole week as the members were busy in a slanging match on whether a Joint Parliamentary Committee should be appointed to probe the IPL affairs. While the last word has not been uttered on the subject, the demand for a JPC inquiry – only four have been constituted in six decades — shows the gravity of the situation.
What is worrying for those who see IPL as a model that could be emulated to improve other sports are fears that it could go the way of the Indian Cricket League (ICL) — predecessor of IPL — promoted by Zee TV’s Subhash Chandra that started with a bang and ended with a whimper. While there is a strong case for cleaning up the IPL’s Augean stables, what the government has been doing has little to commend itself.
Reminiscent of the pre-economic reform days when “socialism” was the mantra that the government kept repeating, it has been organising income tax raids on the offices of IPL and its franchises, which has a strong streak of the undesirable in it. Needless to say, there are far better ways of ferreting out the truth about the shareholdings, investments and cross-ownerships in the IPL and fix responsibility for any failures on this count.
But the government has chosen the easier option of intimidation, hardly a substitute for painstaking probe to reveal the truth hidden in layers of falsehoods and false documentation. IPL is often hailed as the success of free enterprise but few realise that government subsidy in the form of virtually free police security for the team, the stadia and the officials, tax exemption as in Maharashtra, subsidised power supply and free infrastructure like stadia have contributed to the IPL’s value, now estimated anywhere between $4 and $11 billion.
But are the returns to the government commensurate with the billions of dollars that IPL often boasts of. That one of the franchises even forgot to file income tax returns is a pointer to the state of laissez faire that exists when it comes to paying “what is Caesar’s to Caesar”.
For all its sins of omission and commission, IPL does not deserve a blanket ban as demanded by some political leaders, including Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, for it has captured the imagination of the public for whom cricket is no longer the gentleman’s game that needs to be played in slow pace over weekends but has become gladiatorial where everything has to happen in a whiff.
If T20 is the kind of cricket they want, let IPL serve it to their heart’s content but it should not be at the cost of the exchequer. Like all businesses, let IPL and its franchises pay taxes and pay for the services it gets from the government, whether it is security or power. Let it give up its arrogance that saw IPL shift the tournaments lock, stock and barrel to South Africa in 2009, hold tournaments when students were appearing for their examinations this year and choose night time for its matches when vast swathe of the countryside goes without power for hours together.
In other words, a reformed IPL that functions above board is the need of the hour. In the enthusiasm to cut Lalit Modi down to size, it would be a tragedy if the IPL baby is thrown out with the bath-water.
Oman Tribune |
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