Sins of omission

Bihar does not have a recognized cricket association. Or rather, it has two — the Cricket Association of Bihar whose head, last heard from, was Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Association of Biharl Cricket, floated by cricketer-turned-politician Kirti Azad. The BCCI dissolved the CAB back in 2008 for ‘financial irregularities’ (which is a bit rich, because if held to that standard the BCCI would need to dissolve all its state associations, and then its own self); since then, the issue has been dragging its feet through various courts.

The shenanigans of the rival associations had led to an exasperated Supreme Court declaring — hoping? wishing? — in November 2012 that cricket should not become a ball in the game of political football. To which pious thought we all say Amen.

But that said — how ironic is it that it is this dysfunctional body that today flies the flag for probity, and successfully challenges in court the constitutional irregularities committed by the BCCI in the constitution of its “inquiry committee” to probe gambling and spot-fixing in the IPL.

Read that again, slowly: Bihar, led by Lalu Yadav, is now the outpost of probity for the BCCI.

Look now at who the BCA has to tilt against: A BCCI hierarchy that contains among others, Rajiv Shukla, among the best connected of Congress politicians; a raft of other well-connected politicians including Jyotiraditya Scindia and Narendra Modi, to name just two.

And Arun Jaitley — the BCCI’s president-in-waiting but more to the point, arguably one of the sharpest legal minds in the country and the national law-minister-in-waiting.

Does it not seem slightly unreal that none of these luminaries saw that the appointment of the inquiry committee, which they all endorsed either actively, or passively by silent acceptance, is “illegal”?

When you collude in illegality, what does that make you?

One tangential point — and this has been made by IS Bindra, who to his credit has despite being part of the system been routinely, vociferously, calling out the serial wrongdoings of the current regime:

Jagmohan Dalmiya, the “interim president”, is as unconstitutional an appointment as was the inquiry committee.

Here is a question I’d love to hear Jaitley speak to: Per the BCCI constitution, is it not the vice-president who assumes the duties of the president when the latter is for whatever reason unable to perform his duties? If yes, why was there a need to bring in someone from outside the chain of command to fill the vacuum created when N Srinivasan had to step down?

PostScript: My column on Yahoo today, about how the BCCI has historically rigged inquiry committees to get itself out of trouble.

How about a ‘DMS’?

It has been wrong from the beginning to bill this as a contest between humans and technology, when in reality it has always been a case of humans using technology and interpreting the evidence it provides. Hawk-Eye can, at best, provide an approximation of the ball’s path, and while being relatively more accurate than human judgement, it is dependent on a number of variables, including overhead conditions, to deliver optimal projections. Hot Spot, while it has improved, can still produce misleading evidence, sometimes because of extreme conditions, but sometimes because of simple human error.

Amidst all the sound, the fury, and the emotion-heavy venting, Sambit Bal’s piece on the DRS comes as a relief. And the part underlined above really goes to the crux of a ‘To DRS or not’ argument that seems to be slipping into a game of ‘gotcha’ by the pro and anti factions.

How about we pretend, just for a moment, that we are sensible? How about we put the cart where it belongs — at the arse-end of the horse?

As Sambit points out, the point of having technology is to use it to eliminate, or at the least minimize, error. So, who makes the error? The on-field umpire. When? At the point of rendering the original decision.

Therefore, when do you really need technology? To aid me in my decision-making — not to second guess my decision after I have made it.

So how about this scenario? You are umpiring at the business end. Anderson bowls, Haddin swishes, keeper and fielder go up in appeal — and you are not sure Haddin got the nick the fielders think he did.

The operative bit here is, you are not sure. And that is when you need technology (Errors — a large part of them — stem from your being forced into a decision without having all the facts at your disposal).

So in this hypothetical scenario, the umpire whose decision is sought phones upstairs and goes, mate, can you check the visuals on this one? I know the keeper took it clean, I think I heard a noise, but I didn’t see an edge. Check?

The third umpire checks the front foot, checks Hot Spot, freezes the frame if necessary at the point of supposed impact to see if there is perceptible daylight between bat and ball, and reports his findings back to the on-field umpire. Who, now armed with as much data as is available, then makes the call yea or nay. And that is that.

Today the use of technology has created a game within a game  (You are playing against the system, you’ve got three throws of the dice, let’s see if you are good enough to put your chips on the table at the right time).

What if we move the debate away from whether or not to use tech, to when to use tech?

What if we replace the Decision Review System with a Decision Making System?

Or does that smack of a solution too simple it of course should never even be considered?

To hell and back

“I was sick of being called ‘Park Street’. I realized that I can’t fight this behind a mask. I had to make the point that we have nothing to be ashamed of. Society should be ashamed to make rape victims feel a stigma. Me? The ‘Park Street Rape Victim’? Bullshit!  I‘m a mother, I’m a daughter, I’m a sister. People depend on me and love me!”

There are stories — of man’s inhumanity to his fellows, for instance — that disgust you, that repel, that provoke rage and grief in equal measure.

There are stories — of the spirit triumphing over tribulation, of dauntless will and bottomless bravery — that give you warm fuzzies; that make you glad you are alive and there is hope for you and your kind yet.

And then there are those rarer stories where both emotions conflate. Stories that make you rage and cheer all at the same time. Stories that plumb inhuman depths and soar to superhuman heights.

This is one such story. Till just a couple of weeks ago, she was a faceless entity. Or no, not even an ‘entity’ — she was a headline only; she was a ‘trending topic’, a Twitter hashtag. She was a statistic; she was grist for nudge-wink-giggle bar-room conversation.

She was ‘The Park Street Rape Victim’.

That is not what it says on her passport; that is not what she was to her mother and her father and her sister and her two daughters and to the small world contained within Kolkatta that she was part of — but that is what she was, that is all she was, to the wide world outside.

Rape shredded her of her dignity, her security, her sense of self. The aftermath abolished her identity.

This is the story of The Park Street Rape Victim Suzette Jordan.

This is the story of a ‘victim’ who decided to become a ‘person’ again.

There is something about the way Suzette Jordan says “my rape” – emphasizing the ‘r’ – that makes you flinch each time you hear it. Life, for Suzette, is divided into two tight compartments: “before my rape” and “after my rape”. She speaks using her whole body as a symbol of protest. She’s fiercely confident and laughs heartily, which are not what a ‘rape victim’ is entitled to be and do.

Commissioned by Nisha Susan (@chasingiamb) and Gaurav Jain (@mau-mauing) for Yahoo, and written by Shriya Mohan, it is a follow-up to Nisha’s timeless piece from yesterday of what every woman should know, and do, in the first 24 hours after rape.

Also, please do read this comment posted by Varunan yesterday, relating to Nisha’s story.

24 Hours (and an announcement)

As on June 20, 2013, New Delhi alone has recorded 860 cases of rape. (Note: Those are only the documented cases.)

That is a little over twice the incidence of the first six months of last year. And this doubling of the rate of rape comes against the backdrop of the horrific gang-rape of late December; the enormous public outcry and protests triggered by that incident; the sweeping recommendations of an inquiry committee expressly set up to explore how to reduce the incidence of rape; and the oft-expressed intent of both police and polity to make the world — or at least, Delhi —  safe for women.

Guess what? Nothing has changed — unless you call ‘getting worse’ change. Here is the excellent Nisha Susan (@chasingiamb) on what it feels like to be a woman, what it feels like to know that rape is not a question of ‘whether’ but only ‘when’:

That moment sneaks up on you. The moment passes and you go back to unconsciously arranging your life around avoiding this one crime. Every time you hear footsteps behind you, every time you open your front door, every time you walk through a basement parking lot, every time you turn into a dark street, you wonder – Is this the one? Is this how it’s going to happen? As comedian Ever Mainard says, “The problem is that every woman has that one moment when you think, here’s my rape! This is it. OK, 11:47 pm, how old am I? 25? All right, here’s my rape! It’s like we wait for it, like, what took you so long?”

For some of us – for at least 24,923 documented Indian women in 2012 alone – there has come that other unfortunate, jolting moment when you have been raped.

Three out of four times, you are likely to have been raped by someone familiar, someone familial: your uncle comes to drop off a tiffin box and stays to chase you round the house, breaking everything you try to hide behind, pulling the landline wire out of the wall. Your brother-in-law tries to rape you when you are five months pregnant. Your former husband decides that divorce isn’t quite enough. Thesarpanch of your village. Your nephew. Your brother’s friend. Your brother. Your father.

Here is your rape. It has come. And here comes that epiphany. The realization that you have been warned about this moment your whole life but still don’t know what you are supposed to do afterwards.

So what are you supposed to do? What can you do? What must you do?

In a timeless piece designed for Everywoman, Nisha Susan provides answers. Read — and do circulate, because this really, really, needs to be part of every woman’s knowledge-base.

Which brings me to the announcement promised in the parenthesis. Starting today, the team of Nisha Susan and Gaurav Jain will on behalf of Yahoo India commission, edit, illustrate and publish one medium-to-longform article, on a topic of contemporary interest, at the rate of one on each of the five working days of the week.

Got ideas, tips, suggestions, comments? Contact:

Nisha Susan: @chasingiamb

Gaurav Jain: @mau_mauing