In Kohli Move, The India Story

FIRST a disclaimer. I know just enough about cricket to perhaps manage to impress my house help. Or maybe not. But you can’t be a journalist with an Indian passport and feign ignorance about a news event as important as Virat Kohli fading out. Honestly, it would be some time before we know the truth about his resignation. There was no phenomenal talent snapping at his heals for natural succession unlike with Ganguly (Dhoni, Dravid being nightwatchman) or Dhoni (Kohli). Not unnatural if Kohli allowed his recent form to get to his mind, and not the first time if the BCCI bosses wanted a captain eased out for whatever reasons. At various points in time, Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Azharuddin, Dravid - all have been eased out. One would say almost every captain! Stats show Kohli as India’s best captain in all forms of the game. But that’s for the cricket experts to dissect. Remember, I am not. So here’s a bit of pop sociology and the works, if you will. It’s a cricketing legend that when Kapil’s Devils brought the world cup home in 1983, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had to organize a Lata Mangeshkar concert to raise funds to decently felicitate the star cricketers. The then BCCI chief (and a union minister to boot!) NKP Salve was not deemed important enough to be sent a pass for the final at Lord’s. Last year, the BCCI had a turnover of about Rs 15,000 crores, or a little over USD 2 billion. Every international match India plays, pays the cricket board about Rs 40 crores. An IPL fixture even more at about Rs 55 crores. What a journey from 1983! Google richest cricketers in the world. Top three in all lists are Indian names, Kohli being in all of them at about Rs 1,000 crores of net worth. This presumably excludes his wife Anushka Sharma’s assets who is a successful individual in her own right. Why is this important? Indian cricket’s journey from penury to riches can be seen as coterminous with that of India on the move. The wealth – both personal and public – getting reflected in individual and national attitude. Commenting on the visiting Indian team under Sachin Tendulkar’s captaincy sometime in 1998-99, former Australian captain Steve Waugh could not help but notice in his autobiography, the meek surrender the Indians would do every time they faced adversity on the ground. Same Waugh records, howsoever grudgingly, the transition that took place under Sourav Ganguly, mind games and all. “India was no more the soft underbelly squad under its feisty leader Sourav”, Waugh said after losing his farewell match to the ruthlessness of Ganguly in Sydney in 2003. Remember Ganguly’s famous late arrivals for the toss? Or the half Monty at Lord’s? Something was changing. If coming of Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the mid-2000s was a sensation, in good measure it was due to the way the small-town upstart would conduct himself with no quarters given elan. Kohli only took it to the next level, with his tattoos and devil may care attitude. These years also saw the deepest bench strength perhaps for the Indian cricket team – and consistency of performance. This was also the time India was liberalizing with the economic reforms push. Foreign exchange reserves were steadily increasing. Growth was bringing in corporate profits, and hence sponsorships. Governments, both at the centre and in the states, started having more revenues at their command to invest in infrastructure and public services. From the meekly stewardship of a Sachin Tendulkar to the in-your-face nouveau riche of Sourav Ganguly to the internalized aggression of a Dhoni to the institutionalized aggro of Kohli, it has been a progressive transition that reflects how India has changed last three decades. That Indian cricket and India have moved together was most tellingly underscored by another former Australian captain Michael Clarke last year. In a radio podcast, he said that he notices many of his compatriot cricketers desist from sledging Kohli or his team for the fear of losing out on IPL contracts! One could paraphrase the same for Prime Minister Modi in the world of global politics! So how does Kohli’s leaving captaincy square up? Irrespective of whether he quit on the issue of form, or deeper disagreements with cricket bosses – BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal is on record saying Kohli still had 2-3 years of test captaincy ahead of him – at 33 years he has lived a full sporting life. Despite statistically the most successful captain, its likely the legacies of Ganguly and Dhoni would weigh more heavily on the shaping of Indian cricket in this century. The jury is still out.

Modi Sees in China An Opportunity, With Challenges, Not An Enemy

SCEPTICISM has been expressed in some quarters about the Narendra Modi government's China policy in the backdrop of the “informal” Wuhan summit with President Xi Jinping. Congress party has charged that the Wuhan summit happened in the shadow of reports that Chinese construction activities continue unabated on their side of Doklam. Doubts have ranged from lack of specifics to outright capitulation in Prime Minister flying down to China at a short notice. The reported MEA circular asking top government functionaries to stay away from Tibet Day celebrations had also played some role in fuelling the speculation.

Can one attempt to read Modi's mind? Apart from his four visits as PM, Modi has been to China four more times as Chief Minister of Gujarat, memories of one of which – to the Three Gorges Dam – he shared with Xi in Wuhan. The number of visits by themselves should be proof that Modi sees in China an opportunity, not an enemy. It could be safely said that as a leader, Modi is fascinated with some aspects of Chinese achievements which he thinks can provide solutions to many developmental issues facing India. One of the many acronyms he coined in those days – SSS for Speed, Scale, and Skill – has a clear Chinese ring to it. I remember every time he would return to Gandhinagar from his China visit, he would ask his bureaucrats to hold a press conference about the takeaways and what all could get replicated in Gujarat.

Should it mean, as sceptics believe, that Modi might be overlooking the threat from China in focussing on the opportunity part of the relationship? Far from it. As India's actions in Doklam proved, when push comes to shove, the Modi administration is not found wanting. Or for that matter, the surgical strikes against Pakistan post the Uri terror attack underscored the need based muscularity that his government could show. On trade for example, after the United States, India has lodged highest number of complaints with the WTO against China.

But conflicts, both of trade and military kinds, have opportunity costs that tap into national resources. There comes a time in the history of nations, as indeed in lives of individuals, when one digression can swing the destiny between success and defeat. Imagine if Abraham Lincoln had not moderated the radical Republicans to get the South into the Union kickstarting the Reconstruction. The four decades between Reconstruction and Progressive eras were of intense churn in the United States aimed at reforming and transforming the society on a solid bedrock of industrialization and development without getting involved with the outside world. It was due to this national consolidation that by the time of WW-I, a single private American financial institution – the House of Morgans – was bankrolling the war effort of British and French governments combined. Reconciliation was one of the three pillars of the Progressive thought.

Roughly the same time as that of Reconstruction Era in the United States, Japan hit the road to Meiji Restoration opening up to the world for learning, shutting out all conflict, and fully focus on uplift of the national mass under the Emperor. The trigger might have been Japanese awe of the advanced American warships under Commodore Matthew Perry in 1865, but the Meiji period over next four decades underscored a nation's collective will to dream of a progressive future, which Japan continues to live in some ways even a century later.

China took a similar route under Deng Xiaoping, his pragmatism encapsulated in his dictum “hide your ambitions and disguise your claws.” Chinese detente with the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and its subsequent rise over last four decades is recent history. Behind the self-assured brazenness of today's China is that period of focussing all energies on developing economically and not concern itself much with the world. The rise of China is a reality with which the whole world from America to Africa to Europe is struggling to grapple in its own ways. In case of India there's the added burden of a shared and disputed border.

At the development stage India is in, we need to keep our heads low and focus on the job of nation building brick by brick. Much like Japan, America, or China did in their restoration and reconstruction. Seen against this backdrop, contrary to a motivated perception about a perpetual 56-inch bravado, Modi has shown a streak of realism that should put him in line with a Deng. In readily agreeing to fly down to Wuhan, Modi might have only borrowed a leaf out of the Chinese book. It only helps that in an election year avoiding a stand-off with China might have electoral premium attached too.