31 August 2009

How expensive is winning?

Vijay Mallya's Force India team just secured its first pole position
in the Hungarian GP. Giancarlo Fisichella just turned that into a
first podium finish - 2nd place!! Anybody following this sport will
know what a significant achievement this is. Just a week ago, the
Sports Authority of India disallowed the entry of Formula One into
India as it is "not a sport"! One of the reasons cited was that there
was no benefit to Indian sports by paying 171 crores to the F1 body
every year. I wonder if Doordarshan's live telecast of a Kabaddi
match between junior teams of Chattisgarh and Patna would be a good
substitute. (Did you miss that toe biter? What a pity!)

Sports Minister MS Gill who is fast dropping out of credibility of any
sort in my view has called Formula One "expensive entertainment"!
Could anything be more expensive entertainment than Indian politics?
Ten thousand crore rupees spent on an election? You've got to be
joking! How many Formula One events can we have for that kind of
money, AND make it back! We're making nothing back from campaigns and
election expenses. But MS Gill has the gall to say the government is
more interested in human resources development and is staying away
from Formula One. Thank God for small mercies. Can you imagine a
compulsory entry for an Ambassador and an autorickshaw on a Formula
One circuit?

How many of us have the bravery to assume MS Gill would have done some
research and found out that Formula One is not only a huge spectator
sport, it is also heavily manpower intensive, and is the reason for
some of the greatest technological advances in automotive technology?
Does he even know how many Indian people watch F1 and how much money
we inevitably push out of the country each time a race is held? What
is wrong with India making some of it?

Does Gill realize how much of a gamble Mr. Mallya has taken to further
India's inclusion in a global sport? Does he have the awareness to
know how much effort goes into even showing up on the Formula One
grid? By passing such flippant remarks like "expensive
entertainment", he has shown nothing but ignorance about a sport that
is incredibly complex, dynamic in its demands, and does not guarantee
results for effort or resources poured in. It is enthralling in every
dimension, and no wonder it is way ahead of kabaddi. Aviation fuel is
expensive, so can we stop flying? Food is expensive, so can we stop
eating? What an idiot.

According to MS Gill, it appears the government wants "cheap
entertainment", which is duly provided by the lousy unathletic
grunting that goes on Doordarshan every now and then in the name of
sports. Golly, that must be cheap. You can usually tell by the
number of sponsors. Zero is never a good number. That simply means,
not even a cheap shampoo maker is interested in being a part of most
of the athletic events that go on all over India.

So, what human resources are we developing Mr. Gill? The Indian
football team won the Nehru Cup in a thrilling penalty shoot out last
evening. But we have a foreign coach. No Indian coach up until now
had really delivered, so what human resource were we developing for
all these years? It means, whoever had the job before Mr. Houghton
was just as clueless as he was when he was part of the losing team for
years before!

We have no business being choosy about which sport to develop.
Certain countries are good at certain sports, because they run with
whatever shows improvement. We cannot keep on whipping kabaddi and
gilli when our kids want to become archers, shooters and marathoners.
Again, no offence intended to our rural masses, but not many of those
jokers cut it. There is no phenomenal wealth of athletic talent in
India like in many African countries. We hate pain, and it takes an
ability to endure pain to excel in many athletic disciplines. But
more importantly, we need winners. Only winners make it worth it.

If Formula One necessarily has to make a contribution to Indian sports
- What kind of a contribution to Indian aviation has the Hindustan
Aeronautics Limited made? That one organization has bled our economy
to thousands of crores over the years, and not produced a single
aircraft for any of our airlines or our Air Force to purchase. So why
does it exist? We can easily say, "It is not a company"! The HAL
also imports millions of dollars worth of foreign components to fit
into its ridiculous prototypes. Is that worth anything?

What kind of morons are in decision making positions in our country?
Clearly there are two Indias - one that wants to run ahead and compete
with the best in the world, and another that is clueless, backward,
dogmatic, and government controlled. Those that work for government
in India are invariably incompetent, ill informed, and downright
stupid. They retard progress, stand in the way of the smallest
efficiencies and do not deserve anything but our most candid
untouchability.

People like MS Gill didn't do anything for the appearance of an
Abhinav Bindra or an MS Dhoni in the national sports limelight. And
yet, he has the gall to chastise Dhoni for not showing up at an awards
function. I'd definitely be less inclined towards attending a humdrum
awards function compared to ANYTHING. If Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh
had advertising commitments to keep, who cares? Good for them!
Chances are, their dates were fixed well before these government
functions.

We need to get more winners, Mr. Gill. It really isn't going to help
anybody's cause thinking in your retarded fashion. If we don't get
more winners up there, we won't have dreamers who want to emulate
them. And our winners deserve the fruits of their success. That is
precious and cannot ever be called "expensive" no matter what it
costs. In any case, it isn't your f*$#ing money, so get the f*$# out
of the way, please. Our tax money, however IS our money, so why is a
retard like you getting paid for being stupid? At the very least,
shut the f*$# up. (Any words you cannot decipher can be left out
without altering the meaning.)

Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh can afford to think objectively. Their
advertisements are worth a lot of money, their absence at an awards
function not. They made the natural choice. A Kapil Dev would have
been patriotic enough to give importance to the symbolism of
representing his country and receiving an honour from the government,
but not this generation of cricketers. God bless them for being
rational. Government needs to get its act together. They need to put
smart people in place, stop making stupid comments like "Formula One
is expensive entertainment", and stop providing cheap entertainment.

- BSK.

30 August 2009

A nation of dumb devotees.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/08/30/stories/2009083057940100.htm

Ah, we've done it, again! Lives of little children sacrificed for
absolutely no gain.

A soothsayer and her husband predict the death of a certain child,
then poison the poor child to make that prediction come true! How
ingenious. The village believed it as something mystical. Even
worse, the mudering fraud soothsayer and her husband thought they
would get magical powers if they sacrificed children. What century
are we living in? Oh, wait a minute, this is India.

This should send shock waves through our nation, but it won't. It
will be forgotten and ignored as a stray incident. This exact set of
events may be stray and rare, but for all of the BJP's "India Shining"
trumpeting, and for all of us Indians who believe India will be a
"superpower" like it is our birthright - get this straight - We are a
country of dumb devotees. We're devoted to a lot of idiotic,
dogmatic, irrational nonsense in the name of culture and we've
completely lost our ability to think, be intelligent, rational and
effective in our thoughts and actions.

We are, instead, driven by absolutely insane religious hooliganism, or
why would Madhavan Nair take part in a coconut breaking ceremony
before blasting Chandrayaan to the moon? Well, the bloody thing is
now broken, isn't it? Mission over, prematurely. Shall we safely
conclude that the camphor was not lit right? Or shall we speculate
that the priest was having an extra marital affair much to the anger
of our Gods?

Why is it that we become subservient to the unseen powers even though
it is our effort that carries us forward at every step? Faith and
belief can be beautiful things if they are used to spur us on to
greater achievements, but when they become the only guiding force,
we're losing out on a great deal of capability.

Comedian Vivek famously ridiculed a lemon on a lorry in a Tamil film,
asking if it was the lemon and not the fifty thousand parts engineers
put together that made the lorry move! The wisdom of that has been
lost but the humour remains fresh. Thank God for small mercies!

This isn't an argument against the presence of God, or a profession of
the agnostic viewpoint. An athlete in peak fitness, calming his or
her nerves down with a prayer just before launching into a supreme
physical effort is a very human, natural and complete effort cycle.
Faith in God can be a good destresser, and if in knowing God is with
us we are stronger in our heart, then great. But the athlete didn't
spend more time in prayer than in hard work. That is the point being
completely missed by our masses. To a lot of us, worship is work.

The founding pillars of India are rooted in truth, not God.
"Satyameva Jayate" is on every single emblem of India. Why is it then
that we have trumpeted God much more than truth? The truth about
India is bound to hurt us. We're a nation of backward thinking,
stupendously foolish people punctuated by a few brilliant minds. So,
why are we still fiercely devoted to stupidity?

There was a ceremony of sorts at a temple in Tamilnadu a few weeks
ago, where coconuts were broken on people's heads. Some ritual this!
The government medical machinery was at hand to render first aid! How
ridiculous that the taxpayer has to bear the burden for this foolish,
religious and barbaric practice.

Why is there no fundamental drive to create a place for rational
thought in our education? There are enough and more texts about
religions, Gods, our incredible "unity in diversity" and so on. How
about some "truth" telling our children that this is the nation where
women are molested in public, coconuts are broken on our heads in the
name of God, and a huge percentage of us do not have clean water to
drink? How about starting there and presenting the idea that God
could be a belief, a construct, and a lot of very successful people do
not practise any religion?

Every now and then, we have this excuse that poor, illiterate and
downtrodden people cannot really afford education. Well, if the
government of Tamilnadu can give them rice at Re.1/kg and free
televisions, they have both money to spare and a window to the world.
Why not use the TV to present the idea of rational thought? Why not
present an idea to them that makes them wonder why they are poor in
the first place?

Last week in Bihar (where else?) there were hunger deaths because some
poor families didn't get their quota of rice, even though they paid
for it and bribed the now absconding Public Distribution System
official. Of course this event is not even on the news any more,
since Priyanka Chopra is not their spokesperson. What better way to
get rid of our poor and downtrodden? Let's starve the entire
population of poor, illiterate people to death.

Our poor and downtrodden will remain that way until we give them the
power to stand up. But do they want that power? They are so stupid,
they'd rather worship the politician who gives them rice rather than
become self sufficient. They are so slavish and subservient in their
minds, they are defeated even before any fight can begin. How do we
get them to fight for what is right? Simple answer - we cannot. They
are a blight on the face of this nation and must be dealt with the
iron fist of rationalism.

Ignore them for a few years and see how they cope. I bet they'll get
smarter. Stop giving them free anything. Let them work to survive
and figure out what it takes to survive. Let their deities and gods
take care of them if they are such good devotees. If not, we will
remain a nation of dumb devotees.

At the other end of the spectrum we have a lot of tax evaders and
criminals who dump their ill gotten money into collection boxes at
places of worship! Like God really needs their money and is willing
to persuade the nation to forgive their fraudulent, anti-national
activities. What kind of a twisted nation are we?

I wouldn't wish the lousy job of straightening out our nation on my
worst enemy. So I will leave God, at the very least my God, out of
this!

- BSK