´óÏó´«Ã½

Is the (IPL) too much of a good thing? Will cricket and commerce both suffer if it is overdone? Is spin dominating substance when it comes to selling the world's most expensive cricket tournament?

If you believe the man who runs this heady cocktail of hit-and-run cricket, Bollywood and glamour, Indians can never have enough of the IPL. In its third six-week season, everyone in India, according to writer , is "playing, reading, breathing, eating, talking and bidding cricket." Cricket and capitalism have never had a more torrid relationship. The talk of the town is the addition of who have paid about as much as the eight teams did two years ago when the IPL was born. So next year we will have 10 teams instead of eight and 94 matches instead of 60. Happy?

I'm not so sure. Let us not get deluded by the market's response. It's a no-brainer for businesses to hitch a ride on the IPL gravy train in a cricket-crazy country.

Even his critics concede Mr Modi was clever enough to cash in on an idea which was waiting to be exploited. He has seemingly created to impress market experts and help teams make money.

Mr Modi has sold theatrical rights to cinema halls and bars to screen matches (not working yet, going by the empty halls) and internet rights to You Tube (slow broadband speeds mean that the reported two-year $7m deal is yet to become a winner in India). He is selling after-match parties (but it is unclear how long the interest will last). A TV channel has paid up to $22m for IPL-branded TV shows - a sharp idea. Then there is advertising in stadiums, mobile phone rights and ground sponsorship. Teams get a share of all these revenues. They also mop up their own revenue by picking up local sponsors, selling team merchandise and gate receipts.

No wonder IPL cheerleaders are calling it the "billion dollar baby". Rahul Bhattacharya, India's finest cricket writer, says India will accept the IPL with because it is not a sporting society. "Its [society's] relationship with sport is not of participant but consumer. It holds nothing sacred. The IPL knows that it competes not against sport but general entertainment," he says.

But, amid this hype, there is absolutely no way to verify the spin about the IPL's fortunes. Lalit Modi says it is India's biggest global brand and valued at I have asked many friends in the valuations business and they say they have no clue about the basis of this figure. Mr Modi also insists that the tournament will generate up to $140m, translating into earnings of $18m for each team.

Yet, three editions later, one hears that most teams are not making money. This is despite the fact that the team owners are paying IPL for their teams in 10 yearly instalments. Most agree that to become truly profitable, the teams have to build a loyal city-based fan base. The tournament's move to South Africa last year because of security concerns at home was a big blow to this ambition. Building a loyal fan base is going to be tough in a country which has systematically neglected its domestic tournaments. These offer the best opportunity to build up captive fan bases. At a recent match between Delhi and Mumbai, which featured the redoubtable Sachin Tendulkar, I saw spectators waving India flags - instead of local team flags - in the stands.

All this makes me uneasy about the commerce of the IPL. Is it an oversold event, a bubble that is going to burst one day? What if the phenomenal projections for its future - on the basis of which sponsorships are sold - fall short? And as writer Tanya Aldred wonders: "The IPL is a huge sticky and sickly and delicious pudding that gives an instant , and is a guilty pleasure. But the question is, will greed overtake us and will we stop in time?" It's a good question.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

I have just finished reading a 116-page report by a committee appointed by the Delhi high court on the "condition of workers" engaged in construction work on Commonwealth Games sites in the Indian capital. The October Games, on which the government is spending , is the biggest international sporting event India has ever hosted.

The report is shocking. It confirms Delhi's worst kept secret - how the shiny new stadia and other infrastructure hide the exploitative and unsafe conditions that 150,000 workers have to work under. My colleagues who have ventured out to report the story have come back with tales of workers cowering in fear and refusing to talk, and contractors who hire them refusing to meet for interviews.

Frightening details emerge from separate reports filed by human rights groups to the high court. Tariq Adeeb of the respected tells me that independent investigations have found that more than 70 workers have been killed in accidents at the sites since work began. In reports submitted to the court, groups talk about 48 workers dying in accidents. The court-appointed committee found that at the Games village alone, four workers had died in accidents and one woman worker had died in a fire.

"Accidents are taking place causing injury resulting in death and disablement - both temporary and permanent," the report for the court says. The committee investigated 10 Games sites.

Most of the workers at the building and construction sites come from outside Delhi - mainly Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Bihar and Orissa states.

"These workers, says the report, "are being made to work in harsh and unsafe conditions without basic amenities from the employers concerned."

Recruiting agents who hire migrant workers are required to obtain a licence from the authorities from the originating state. The report found that the majority of agents did not have licences. The workers are entitled to a "displacement allowance", but almost nobody has been paid it.

The report says the minimum daily wages are not being paid to all workers - the minimum daily wage for unskilled workers in Delhi is 151 rupees ($3.30), while the committee found workers on most Games sites are being paid on average 114 rupees ($2.50).

In many cases, the report says, the workers were not receiving overtime. And when they were getting it, they were being paid at the standard rate, not the statutory double time.

The exploitation of labour doesn't appear to end here - the report says the workers are never given a weekly day off with wages. They have no proof of employment as no wages slips are being issued.

A separate study by a rights group covering 702 workers at 15 key sites found that workers were not given leave even if they fell sick, and medical leave was granted only in 30% of cases. Most sites have little or no medical facilities.

Workers' safety - as I wrote here some months ago - is also apparently being widely flouted. Workers do not wear boots or gloves at many sites. "There were reports of accidents at almost every site, but the same could not be verified," the report says. Most of these accidents were not reported to the authorities.

The report has strongly criticised the living conditions of the workers. "Lack of overall hygiene, environmental sanitation and cleanliness was deplorable," the report said. Many of the workers "were living in rooms, often without doors, without protection during winter, without electricity and without toilets".

It found a bias against hiring women workers - there was only one crèche found at the Games village site - and that women were being paid less than men.

The court report says the agencies - government bodies, contractors, recruiting agents - involved in the construction refuse to take responsibility for such appalling work conditions and wage violations. Rights groups say the report is a damning indictment of the way government and private contractors treat workers and that it also confirms how they have made a mockery of India's labour and wage laws.

None of the Commonwealth Games officials, including the chairman of the organising committee, Suresh Kalmadi, took my calls when I tried to reach them for their reaction to the report. VK Gupta, a senior engineer of the CPWD, one of the government agencies involved in the construction work has said the violations are Michael Hooper, chief executive of the London-based (CGF), was more forthright saying "there is no excuse for flouting the law".

"India has laws to protect the lives and safety of its workers. Obviously there is no excuse for any employer or agency to break these laws," he told the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

"The contractor and hiring agencies at the Commonwealth Games should make sure the laws are adhered to. I fully back the recommendations of the court to have a monitoring group to be put in place to ensure violations dont happen."

When I asked him whether this was a big embarassment for the Games, Mr Hooper said: "This [kind of violation] is not unique to India. These violations, unfortunately, happen all over the word."

But what I find particularly galling is the silence of political parties on the state of workers. The local Hindu nationalist BJP has made an issue about the proposed to guests at the Games. The Congress-led Delhi government is going to town with a planned campaign, imploring the city's people to behave properly during the Games. The parties of the Left are silent. All this even as the government cleared nearly 700 million rupees in extra funds for the Games, taking its bloated budget to more than $2bn.

Athletes from 85 countries arrive in Delhi in October to participate in the 19th Games, which are supposed to showcase India's ability to host an international event. Human rights groups say it's a sham - and what was supposed to be a matter of national pride is fast beginning to look like a national shame.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

It is India's most bloody, intractable and shadowy war in recent history.

Today 223 districts - India has 636 districts - in 20 states are "Maoist affected", up from 55 districts in nine states six years ago. Ninety of the affected districts, according to the government, are experiencing "consistent violence". PM Manmohan Singh calls it the country's "greatest internal ".

As Maoist activity has expanded over a vast swathe of mineral-rich jungles and countryside where most of India's tribespeople - its poorest of the poor - live, the cost of the conflict has been huge.

The government says 3,457 civilians were killed in 11,642 incidents of rebel-related violence between 2003 and 2009. Nearly 1,300 security forces and 1,350 rebels have died in the war, it says.

As the toll rises, the conflict provokes a sharply polarised debate.

On the one side are the city-bred romantic revolutionaries. One perceptive analyst calls them a "Maoist-aligned intelligentsia vicariously playing out their revolutionary fantasies through the lives of the adivasis [tribespeople], while the people dying in battle are almost all adivasis". They protest against the government's to smoke out the rebels.

On the other, are supporters of strong state action who believe the security forces should annihilate the rebels and wrest back areas under their control. Collateral damage, they believe, is par for the course.

So India's Maoist rebels, in the words of another commentator, are either "romanticised, eulogised [or] demonised". It depends on which side you are on.

It is time to ask some basic questions.

What do the Maoists want?

They want to establish a "communist society" by overthrowing the country's "semi-colonial, semi-feudal" form of rule through an armed struggle. The say they are for the rights of the neglected tribespeople, an unquestionably laudable goal in a vastly iniquitous land.

So are they revolutionary Marxists? Are they anarchists? Or are they India's equivalent of historian "social bandits", peasant Robin Hood outlaws? It is difficult to say.

Who is suffering the most in the seemingly unending war?

The same tribespeople for whom the Maoists say they have picked up the cudgels.

They are caught in the crossfire between the rebels and security forces. They are hounded by hunting for rebel sympathisers. (In Chhattisgarh, the rebel heartland, nearly 50,000 villagers have been forced from their villages by a state-sponsored militia and are now lodged in some 20 camps.)

The rebels end up killing poorly paid, poorly armed policemen, small businessmen and low level political workers. Analysts find it odd that their "class enemies" do not include big businessmen and companies, presumably because many of them cough up protection money.

What has been the track record of India's Maoists?

Not very inspiring, say most commentators, apart from a few exceptions of getting a fairer deal for the poor by intimidating the state.

They point out that the Maoists never questioned the of India. In 1971, during the war with Pakistan, they supported the Pakistani president and even advised revolutionaries in East Pakistan - now Bangladesh - to defend Pakistan. Analysts say the rebels were taking their cues from China.

Another criticism is that the rebels have never really tackled or taken on the rising tide of communalism that swept the country in the 1980s and 1990s. They have shown little interest in taking a stand against Hindu or Muslim fundamentalism.

Are the rebels the only ones fighting for India's poor?

No way. There are hundreds of civil society movements working tirelessly - movement against people displaced by dam projects is a stand-out example.

But the rebels succeed in grabbing attention, many believe, because they practice violence.

"Violence [has] the potential to make news and attract attention... satyagrahas [passive resistance], non-violent actions and human chains have been made completely ineffective and delegitimised by the state and the media," says political scientist .

So what do the Maoists end up doing?

Operating in a binary world of "either you are with us or against us" - eerily reminiscent of a recent "war on terror" - the rebels, many analysts say, have taken an awkward, simplistic position on how people behave and society operates.

"We are not yet in a completely Orwellian universe. Some things are neither Hindu nor Muslim, neither proletarian nor bourgeois. There is no war to end all wars, no ultimate death penalty that will put an end to all death penalties," says independent scholar .

" [Hindu polity] is not the final solution to the so-called 'minority problem', nor is the 'people's war' the final answer to class exploitation."

In the absence of such understanding, the bloody war grinds on, reaping its grim harvest.
Do the deaths of tribespeople, policemen, rebels, traders and political workers have any meaning? Does the displacement of tens of thousands of people suspected to be sympathising with the rebels make any sense? Or are some right to view these as wasteful deaths and futile displacements?

It is the Maoists' apparent indifference to life that worries Dilip Simeon. "The indifference," he says, "is the mark of nihilism that has overtaken the revolutionary spirit." That is why Maoism in India, many believe, will remain a doomed revolution.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

History is full of delicious ironies. The only person who supported reserving seats for women in parliament during the making of India's constitution was a man. RK Chaudhury made a curious pitch, with a touch of misogyny:

"I think it would be wise to provide for a women's constituency. When a woman asks for something, as we know, it is easy to get it and give it to her; but when she does not ask for anything in particular it becomes very difficult to find out what she wants. If you give them a special constituency they can have their scramble and fight there among themselves without coming into the general constituency. Otherwise we may at times feel weak and yield in their favour and give them seats which they are not entitled to."

The women railed against reservations. member Renuka Roy said Indian women "have been fundamentally opposed to special privileges and reservations". Her colleague Hansa Mehta rejected reservations, saying what women wanted was "social justice, economic justice and political justice".

Over half a century later, the wheel has turned full circle.

So when a landmark bill reserving a third of seats for women in parliament and state legislative assemblies was passed in the upper house after by a small group of socialist MPs, it was a historic moment for the world's largest democracy. Analysts reckon this is politically as significant as the introduction of in 1909, and reserving seats for the "depressed" in 1932. But more than anything, it is a crowning achievement for India's women.

Despite critics who say such quotas are a blow to meritocracy, this affirmative action has to be applauded. In India's largely patriarchal society, women have borne the brunt of neglect, discrimination and violence. Some of it - like female foeticide leading to in some of the most prosperous states - is abominable. Things are changing, but the way India sometimes treats its women is a national shame.

Despite comprising nearly half of India's population, only 54% of women are literate, compared with more than 76% of men. At least 4.5 million girls are out of primary school, nearly double the number of boys. Far too many women still die during childbirth - India's maternal mortality rate, according to the , is about 450 per 100,000 live births.

Also, with barely 10% of its parliamentary seats held by women, India needs to play catch up. Its neighbours fare much better - Bangladesh reserves 15% of its parliamentary seats for women, Pakistan 30% and Afghanistan, after its new constitution, more than 27%.

Sure, there's still a long way to go for Indian women. Nobody is saying that bringing more women into parliament will change things overnight. Indian politics is plagued by nepotism and the unhealthy influence of big money - there are allegations of party tickets being regularly sold to the highest bidders. But of India's village councils and municipalities - where a third of the seats are already reserved for women - have found that increased political representation of women leads to more investment in health and education, less corruption and more altruism.

I remember the sneering men when I was reporting a story on newly-elected women in the village councils many years ago. Most of them said the women would end up as their proxies. But times have changed, and most elected women do not do their husband's or relatives' bidding any longer. India has a controversial record on affirmative action, but this is one move which should be celebrated by all.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

If you believe one , MF Husain is no longer an Indian citizen. "It is all over. I've just completed the final formalities," the celebrated painter is supposed to have told an "anguished" Indian fan at the airport in Qatar's capital, Doha. The fan had asked Husain - Forbes magazine once called him the Picasso of India - whether he had accepted an of Qatari nationality.

The story of Husain is one of the saddest of post-Independence India. It is a story of how the country's most famous painter has been hounded out while the state looked on.

Thirteen years ago, hardline Hindus attacked Husain for his paintings of nude Hindu goddesses. In 2006, he apologised for a painting in which he represented India as a nude goddess. Hindu nationalists accused him of defiling their region.

They didn't stop at that. They vandalised his exhibitions and filed law suits all over the country. Husain reckons that there are 900 cases against him in Indian courts. His lawyer in Delhi tells me he is personally aware of seven such cases. Four have been dismissed, in three others judgement is still pending.

For the past three years, the 95-year-old maverick painter has been living in Dubai and London. When news washed up earlier this month that he was contemplating taking up Qatari nationality, there was predictable from the arts world in India.

"This is not the first time we have thrown away our geniuses," said fellow painter Anjolie Ela Menon. "In India, we recognise our national treasures only when they are gone." Film actor Sharmila Tagore urged the need for a "movement" to bring back the painter to India since "isolated voices" will not help.

To many, this sounded like a case of too little, too late. Most galleries have been scared to exhibit Husain's work for some years now. A big art summit hosted by India two years ago did not exhibit a single Husain painting. Unbelievable, but true.

Many say the Indian government could easily promise Husain security and coax him to return to India. But that wouldn't necessarily allow the painter to live in peace. As his lawyer, Akhil Sibal, tells me, there's nothing to stop more cases being filed against the painter in remote courts or even getting a judge somewhere to order his arrest. The misuse of judiciary to settle scores is rampant in India. "So Husain is not enthused by the prospect of returning to India which he easily can," says Mr Sibal.

The Supreme Court ruled on the controversy two years ago. It that Husain's paintings were not obscene and that nudity was common in Indian iconography and history. It was sad that a court had to remind a people of their own traditions.

Conflicting ideas and ideologies have thrived in India for centuries and the country's ability to manage diversity has been its greatest strength. What value is art if it does not provoke, stimulate and trigger debate?

Many believe that Husain's treatment is a shameful indictment of India. It is also seen as a telling commentary on how the country's antiquated and slow-moving justice system can be subverted to harass people. Many people I meet ask why one of India's brightest talents should suffer such indignity. That begs the question: Does India really deserve MF Husain?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?