Cricket is fun, politics is a bore. Why?

Take politics. Remember the time when parliamentary elections were spaced out over intervals of five years each (and even more sometimes)? When the only action in between could have been one controversial result in a state or a corrupt chief minister or two? And what do we have now? Governments falling in months, parties changing loyalties every day, new chief ministers on demand. And of course, there are statistics, analysis and interviews to explain every twist as it occurs. Are people bored? No way. More and more Indians are skipping their favourite programmes, even staying up late to watch the confidence vote, feverishly discussing numbers and permutations and hanging on to every spoken word. Even in an apolitical city like Mumbai, shopkeepers have had their television sets turned on for the news this past fortnight just as they would for cricket on other days.

Cricket, a game played between two teams of eleven players each. Politics, the process of forming and maintaining a government. Two objects of startlingly varying significance and yet equal in their current hold on our preoccupations. With one crucial difference. Consider the way in which cricket and politics are being perceived as a result of all this coverage. Cricket first. You have reams of information on every aspect these days: pitch, weather conditions, past performances, health problems of individual players, team temperament, social analyses etc. etc. The game has evolved into a high science and every viewer gets to be an expert. Politics on the other hand has witnessed a disappearance of ideology, a skimming over of issues – not that they are not brought up but do you honestly remember the various positions on the Bhagwat issue or who has what stand on the economy, on health or on the Womens’ Bill? It has become a game of numbers and every viewer gets to be an accountant.

How does one explain such an imbalance in priorities? Afficionados will protest at the suggestion, I know, but isn’t there something maniacal about the current obsession with cricket? And when you weigh it against politics doesn’t it make you wonder that we are willing to give a mere game such respectful attention but are content to see our future simplified to a round of musical chairs? I suspect there will be an instant rejoinder to this which is that: it is not our fault – it is our politicians that have turned politics into a joke. The argument could have been given some credence if our cricketers had proved any more deserving. The fact is that accusations of match fixing, allegations about favouritism in team selection and consistently poor performances by our own players haven’t made the slightest dent. The game just grows and grows in stature.

No. To my mind the explanation lies elsewhere. It is to be found in society and its changing mindset. Cast your mind back to a time some two decades ago. To a time when the Indian middle class was still a harried lot. When jobs were hard to come by and money was scarce. When children were urged to be diligent and responsible. And whatever their natural inclinations may have been they were held in check by admonitions that preached moderation. "Don’t eat too much – you will get a stomachache" was common one, so was "too much reading spoils the eyes" and "take only one." Think of the situation today. The same class has entered into prosperity. The time of strife is past and we have more time for leisure. Values have changed as well. `Indulge’, `pamper yourself’, `no one can eat just one’ – these form the mantra of the nineties. In place of denial what we have today is an overwhelmingly positive idea of excess, if not an invitation to obsess ("Eat cricket, sleep cricket etc.").

The result is indiscipline. The rigid code by which we divided time between duty and pleasure in the past has been weakened. The latter has begun to take precedence over the former leaving in its wake an insatiable demand for entertainment. We watch both cricket and politics without limit. We turn cricket into a deep science because it is the only way we can justify the amount of time and energy devoted to it. And we trivialise politics because anything with issues, policies and real consequences could not provide endless entertainment.

In Peter Wier’s recent film, The Truman Show, ordinary people were shown to be hooked to a 24-hour relay of the life of a man as ordinary as themselves; it helped them escape the drudgery of their own lives. A similar sense of escapism appears to be overtaking us. True, politicians haven’t been doing their jobs too well these days. But, how are you faring?

Amrita Shah is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. Her column on social trends and ideas will appear on alternate Thursdays

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