What went wrong?

To all those who watched the game yesterday...my sympathies!!

There is little denying that our team strived really hard yesterday, they gave it their all...Sri Lanka were just too good...
We are out of the world cup...not because we lost to Sri Lanka, but coz we lost to Bangladesh. Everyone is analyzing what went wrong, and here are my two cents as well...

The biggest problem on the day of the game against Bangladesh - the team was nervous. I am sure that Dravid and Greg knew this, yet it was decided that we will project confidence on the outside.
Two major risks were taken and they both backfired. First, in spite of the nervousness in the team, we decided to bat first on a pitch that was going to seam a bit initially. Its one thing to project confidence, it is another to feel it. Any person who has played a bit of sports will tell you this. I remember once when I was playing a District level Table tennis tournament...my first round match was declared as the show case match to be played before the Chief Guest. All my confidence evaporated in no time and I was so tentative I lost a game that I probably should have won, In fact I lost quite badly. Multiply the scenario by a million times and you get what happened to team India. On top of that risk, you not only played a batsman out of form, you actually sent him to open the innings - a huge risk. The move turned out to be a disaster with him getting out early. To make matters worse you send in a novice to bat at 3. Yes these are occasions where people can raise their hands and perform well, but it didn't work out that way. The team never recovered after that...the pressure just mounted on, and unfortunately apart from Sehwag there is no player in our side who ignores pressure while batting. The bowlers were expected to do magic, but there was going to be no magic that day...

We should have gone into the first game with the safest team, had we managed a win then we could have experimented in the game against Bermuda. As it turned out, we just couldn't find that flexibility as we were always running behind...

All sorts of drama will happen now...get rid of Greg, sack Rahul - drop Sachin, Harbhajan...the entire team. I say go ahead and do it and I also say that I can bet that all but a few of these will be back in the side in no time - there is simply no one as good as them. I can go on and on...but here no two people think alike about cricket, so I ll just brood for a few days and then start hoping for better days...

The great Indian Pratfall!!

So we lost to Bangladesh in our World Cup opener! Well there was only one team that deserved to win yesterday and that was Bangladesh. They played with flair and confidence, while the Indian team was so jittery it seemed that they were on the field for the first time.

Probably the toss made a difference, but that still doesn't explain how you can lose 5 wickets for almost nothing...
So what happens now?? I think the Indian team is likely to follow Pakistan home. Maybe the two boards should quickly organize a bilateral series...they can play between themselves and feel good, thats what the hockey teams of the two countries do anyways...there will be some "so called" fans in both the countries that will go nuts and make the defeat an excuse to take out their frustrations by burning effigies and shouting slogans against the players....

The others like me will pray...I can almost imagine all the marketing mgrs, of all the Indian companies sponsoring the WC, making rounds of all the holy places seeking blessings for the team when they take on Sri Lanka (prayers are more reliable than our team). Even the Sri Lankans will be asking why India had to mess up things for them also! If the Indian team does a Champions Trophy, I won't be surprised if people lose all interest in the event - the audience might end up being lesser than what was for the football WC last year. Now that would be something...

Democracy - The Institutions

The last time I wrote on this (long long time ago, I can still remember...:) Democracy - A Note) I closed by saying that active citizenship is what is required for a democracy to become real.
To be effective and active, a citizen should have the knowledge of the fundamental institutions that are presented as the pillars of democracy. Of course it is impractical to expect people to have academic knowledge of these institutions; instead a practical knowledge of the role of each institution should suffice. Although a strict set of institutions is hard to define, the following general characteristics should ideally be established –

• Elected Representatives - Control of government by members of a parliament or assembly etc. elected by citizens.
• Free, fair and frequent elections - with minimal coercion and fraud.
• Freedom of Expression - All citizens should have the right to express themselves on matters political as well others without fear of reprimand from the existing government.
• Access to alternate sources of information - All citizens must have the opportunity to form opinions using data available from multiple sources (as opposed to the "official" sources), so this clearly refers to the freedom of press.
• Autonomous associations - All citizens should have the right to form associations based on interests.
• Inclusive citizenship - All citizens of the country should be bound by the same set of rules and guidelines
• Independence of the judiciary - The judiciary should be accessible to all and more importantly must be separate from the government.
• Impartial civil service - The civil service should be autonomous and not partial towards the government of the day.

Now let us re-examine the institutions with respect to our motherland.

• Elected Representatives - Clearly we have this institution well and running. But the main problem for India is the fact that we have come to a stage where nearly 2 million people are represented by a single person in the Parliament, an average that makes it impossible for a citizen to really make his/her voice heard (all the more reason for him/her to become an active citizen). UK on the other hand has 646 members in the House of Commons making a people/member average of around 100,000 (that is 2o times less than ours). Well one solution could be to raise the total number of seats (will require an amendment as the max perceived strength is 552 according to the constitution). Well it is hard to make things work with 200 odd that do show up in the first place :)
• Free, fair and frequent elections - We definitely do have frequent elections, the other 2 conditions are on dodgy grounds...but I would like to believe that it's not yet a disease. I don't have any data to make an opinion otherwise anyways...
• Freedom of Expression - It is there and it is not there. All depends on what you are trying to say. Books are banned regularly, gag orders are issued too. As for the freedom of press, India was ranked 120 out of 167 by reporters sans frontiers (www.rsf.org) though it does add - "Countries such as the Philippines (111th), India (120th) and Indonesia (117th) figure in the bottom half of the index despite having free and lively independent media, since killings and physical attacks on journalists, along with outdated laws, still prevent a full flowering of the press. Violence against the media in India rarely comes from the authorities but from political activists and in Kashmir from armed groups."
• Access to alternate sources of information - Well again it's there and not there. RTI was brought in to correct this but it has not yet reached the common people (wonder why the government is the least active in spreading the word about it).
• Autonomous associations - The party system thrives here, a little too much perhaps (sigh).
• Inclusive citizenship - This is a problem issue (imho) as it has been the root cause for some of the most deep crevices in our society. Take the special treatment for minorities (separate laws) or the issue of reservation. Both good on paper but deadly in the hands of our "great leaders" and "intellectuals" alike.
• Independence of the judiciary - Overactive at times but definitely and unabashedly independent. So independent that there seems to be no way to cure all the decay that is prevalent (lawyer strikes, long holidays, pending cases, just to name a few).
• Impartial civil service - this has hardly ever existed, some how the bureaucracy has never found its feet.

So how do we ensure that a citizen is active or forced to be active? Umm, next section maybe...

What has been happening...Nothing

It is not like I haven't thought of writing something...but some how I never end up typing anything. But today I came across something so nostalgic I just had to post it (even if it might end up as just a picture post...)

The picture on the left or above ( courtesy http://www.duelinganalogs.com/) is a salute to one of the oldest cheat codes in the gaming industry - associated with one of the most popular console games ever, Contra (developed by the Japanese game developer Konami).

For those not aware, the sequence as depicted in the cartoon is the famous up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-Start sequence that resulted in you starting the game with 30 spare lives.

The code proved so popular that developers incorporated it into more than 100 video games, each providing a unique cheat. Ah the good old console days...