PURSUING PEANUTS!

The Delhi Police slogan says, “With you, for you, always!” I have always wondered what those words really mean, especially when I read in the media about where the focus of the force’s energy lies and what I witness on the Delhi roads.

Recent media reports suggest that the force has great interest in “spot-fixing” in the IPL. I guess the master brains in the force are working overtime to fix the culprits and they seem to have some success. But aren’t there more important issues that the force should pursue with similar alacrity and intent, if they are really “for us” “with us” “always”?

Spot fixing, I read, is not a crime according to the IPC. Hence, all the efforts to book the culprits as criminals, as the force is attempting to do will come a cropper. Proof: the Cronje Affair in 2000! Did the force succeed in prosecuting him and his accomplices!

 IPL we know is both circus and big-business, and a veneer of cricket. As circus we don’t need to give it much importance. It is meant to make us laugh, have a good time. We don’t’ mind the “tricks” the jokers use to make us laugh.

Indrajit Hazra of The Hindustan Times (I love the humour in his Red Herring column on Sundays) compared the IPL to WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment!). The spectators know the whole thing is pre-planned and the outcome is fixed. But do they care? They don’t, writes Hazra. “The thrill is in following the moves and the banter without knowing how the match has been fixed.” So why all the fuss about some blokes making some money! Doesn’t the force have something better to do?

Like any other big business, the players involved, that includes the top brass, will try every means within and outside the rules to “make a buck” more – such as using inside information.

So, Seesanth and co are peanuts! Why not go after bigger crooks? Here are some suggestions (all about issues that affect the lives of ordinary folks):

• Corporate Tax Evasion: which deprives the government of resources to help ordinary people like us through its many programmes.

• Medical Malpractice: through which pharma companies in collusion with health care corporations swindle money off ordinary people and injure their health and cause death.

• Building Mafia and Politician Nexus: through which public land is looted (such as land on the banks of the Jamuna).

• Sex and the City: such as rape and murder of women and children. (Preventing these would be such a credit to the force.)

I think pursuit of these bigger issues that affect our lives and showing some results will give us a more assuring sense that the force is really “With us, for us, always!

(Written with the best of intention, with malice/blame toward none.)