Meri Desh ki Dharti! Cricket and our Farmers

They have just returned. Welcome back the Brave Hearts! Our great cricketers who braved it all down under have come back with the Cup!

With the Sensex at its lowest ebb, the Nifty at its nadir, slackening GDP, receding uncle Sam, and an election just round the corner, it might have been all gloom and doom if it weren’t for these Men in Blue.

Now we have a purpose to live, to breathe and stare another day into its eye. So what if sub-prime crisis in the US, weakening dollar, rising Euro and terrorists still lurk in the background?

Our new found industry called Cricket will see our GDP through.

Our men and boys in blue are the future of this country, more than any starry eyed school kid who is facing the CBSE Board exams, or State Board exams, and his or her little siblings who must be preparing for their turn at the examination chopping boards come next month; which is why Cricket has every right to distract them no end even during the Board exam season.

What is the future of a few thousand kids before the lure of gate money, advertisement dollars, sponsorship fees, TV rights moolah and all the glitter and galore that goes with it? It is Cricket, THE new industry in the Indian firmament.

So I did some thinking and arrived at an incredible idea. Why not harness our men in blue and their charisma and youth for a Farmers’ Cup?!

Let us put them to some serious use for the good of the country, this time in real terms, rather than allow them to become mere tools of distraction to our kids during their exams.

Just last week while our cricketers were laying the ground work to ensure a spectacular welcome when they return to their homeland, we, their hardworking compatriots, were being told we would have to find some way to help our farmers out of the mess our governments got them into.

A whopping Rs. 60,000 crores was the bill on our laps.

Not to worry. Our cricketers can be made to come to the nation’s rescue.

All we have to do is start a big tournament called the Farmers’ Cup Meet and let all the proceeds every year go to alleviate some of the debts of the farmers.

We can even start a lottery linked to this tournament dedicating the proceeds to a Ryot Fund. All teams to play in such tournaments will have to be of the best of the cream.

We can even create a whole new Farmers’ Cup Merchandise for sale in select stores and malls.

Every advertiser who takes advantage of the Cup will also have to pay a Farmers’ Debt Relief Tax.

The BCCI, whose head is a farmer of sorts from Maharashtra, can be persuaded to set aside a portion of its income for our farmers. Any sale of cricket paraphernalia can attract special Debt Relief Tax as well.

Let us all work for a Ryot-Cricketer bhai, bhai situation and make the best of what our craze for this game of cricket has to offer.

Khwaja massoud