IPL and Betting Ho Hungama

These days IPL and betting scandal is all over the news. Media is going frenzy over it. TV news channels are inviting experts like "Vinod Kambli" and "Nupur Mehta" to comment over the Cricket Betting and Bollywood nexus. Almost laughable if that is covered in the prime time 9 PM news. I can understand if it is done in latenight past 2 PM reporting.

So what happened.
Some cricket players formed a nexus with betting bookies and were caught. Immediately they were booked and sent to jail. Well that is not fair. In recent days many politicians and their relatives have been caught doing almost similar thing. None of them has gone to jail. That politician is still serving his tenure in Parliament. All he had to suffer was resign from Ministry.

And now coming to betting. Why is betting on IPL wrong? Let me talk about some famous government approved bettings

1. Stock Exchange : People bet there on the expected value of stock every day. Huge amount of money is involved. Some make money and some loose. We also have betting on future values. If betting in stock exchange is legal, then why not legalize betting on games. Let it be legalized and let government make money on it. And punish those who influence the game to increase their chance of winning just like insider trading in stock exchange.
2. Lottery : This is one of the biggest source of income for government. People are betting on government provided piece of paper

So my request to government and media is that let not make this an opportunity to hide the real issues (big corruption) and make it a media lime light in the hope that people will forget them.
 

Traffic jam in Mumbai

Long wait in jams on a Mumbai road is not a new sight. Celebrities complain of it in their tweets, commoner complain about it all the time. However the recent proposed solution to handle this problem caught me by surprise.
The suggestion is that Government shouldn't allow people to buy car if they don't have parking space. Well they won't let them register the car. Argument given is that people who don't have parking space in their house/societies park their car outside and this causes a congestion on road. And thus the solution is that you can't park on the road.
This solution has some merits but i believe it will cause more mental anguish to people. Now to get registration done you will need to show another document to Transport Office. And we all know of the common malpractice happening in government offices. This will give them one more opportunity to exploit people.
Further the road side parking problem can be solved by fining people/towing away car, which they should be already doing if it is parked in a no park zone. Other approach is to make more public parking available as part of city's infrastructure development. People can pay on rental basis. Any business establishment should provide enough parking space for their customer.
The most essential solution is to improve the public commute system. Put more comfortable buses on the road. Introduce more local trains and more local train stops. Implementation of Metro train is essential for any decently populated city. It will need a strong political will to solve the problem and spending on infrastructure projects.

Dukhi Lal and Candy Business

Disclaimer : This is the story of a very cunning man. The story is purely fictional and any resemblance to living and dead is purely coincidental.

And now being done with disclaimer let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there lived a very cunning man named Dukhi Lal. He had employed a bunch of people (modern day PR personnel), whose job was just to present his fraudulent activities as a service to society. He had formed a company named "Sewa" and was a good spender on advertisements on any channel available.
Dukhi Lal once devised a scheme of robbing candies from poor children. He promised to double the candies given by poor children in 3 years. Since they were poor and the prospect of getting 2 candies for one was very tempting, crores of children gave their candy. Now Dukhi Lal made a lot of money by doing this candy business. To boost his image, "Sewa" company also started sponsoring the very famous sport of the land "Gilli and Danda". Now all the gilli-danda players wore dresses with emblems of "Sewa".

Some government official detected that this is scam since Dukhi Lal didn't had proper permissions to collect candies from poor children. That official filed a complaint in the court of law.

Now Dukhi Lal and his PR personnel started media war with that government official. They put huge advertisements in news papers, saying how this government official is damaging his good name and to a good service to society.

Some one rightly detected that he cannot put such an ad against a government official who is just doing his job and filed another complaint in court of law.

Now Dukhi Lal is getting desperate. Court is mounting pressure on him. So this time he designs a very ingenious plan.

He again puts a big advertisement in all news paper. This time he is asking all the people of land to sing the revered national song with them on a particular day. He is asking everyone to form a big line of millions of people and sing the song. All of them will of course be under his banner. They will get mementos bearing his symbol and a good feeling of what a nice thing they have done for the society and country.

Will you participate in his new scheme?

(c) 2013 Anup Mayank