My Bollywood Columns

Had India won the 2017 Women’s World Cup, then there would have been great celebration in the nation. Social media would have been ecstatic and the prize money, sponsors and jobs would have flowed like water for our women cricketers.

There might even have been an open bus city rally to welcome to them and the images would have been played on TV for days on end inspiring a generation of budding women cricketers. The way 1983 launched the ODI revolution and 2007 launched the T20 revolution, 2017 may have well launched the women’s cricket revolution.

But that was not to be and the opportunity seems to have been lost. But maybe not! The 2017 edition received great attention, higher TRP ratings and trended big time on Twitter. Why not take this interest and carry it forward?

Here are some ideas to make women’s cricket in India even more popular…

1. Launch a women’s IPL in 2018: Millions were glued to TV sets during the WWC and the likes of Mithali Raj and Harmanpreet Kaur became household names. In fact Harmanpreet’s semi-final knock of 171* is one of the best of all time even if you include men’s ODIs. Smriti Mandhana also caught the imagination of Twitter at the beginning of WWC.

The time is right to launch a women’s IPL in 2018. The infrastructure and format is in place and what’s the point of having the most cash-rich board in the world if you can’t launch such tournaments?

The women’s IPL would unearth greater talent and keep women cricketers in the limelight every year instead of every four years. In fact in the 2013 edition we got eliminated early and by the time most people realized a WWC was going on, India were already out.

Since the men’s IPL is in the first half, you could keep the women’s edition in the second. IPL founder Lalit Modi had visualized two IPLs a year and that can be realized in this fashion.

The T20 WWC takes place in November 2018 and it would be great if the BCCI could fit in an IPL just months before that.

2. Aggressive promotion of women’s series: Did you know there have been six women Asia Cups? Did you know that India has won all of them, giving no chance to the likes of Pakistan and Sri Lanka? We are already a colossus on the sub-continent, but just haven’t been able to translate that globally.

Did you know that 19-year-old Deepti Sharma blasted a 188 in the Quadrangular in South Africa just before WWC? The problem is that the BCCI’s efforts at promoting women’s cricket have come a cropper in the past.

We have to now increase the ad campaign budget and push for all the international series that women play aggressively. It shouldn’t just be a once in four year affair. The T20 WWC takes place in West Indies next year and that should receive great coverage.

3. A high-profile coach: Why shouldn’t a Ravi Shastri or an Anil Kumble or a Virender Sehwag coach the women’s team? What’s wrong with that? Women’s team should also have a high-profile Head Coach and a coaching staff that rivals the men’s.

4. Hike the salaries: The total prize money for the 2013 Women’s World Cup was $200,000. For the men’s version in 2015, it was 50 times more at $10 million. They rectified that a bit in 2017 and the women’s cup in 2017 had $2 million in total prize money.

Still, Yusuf Pathan, Robin Uthappa and Dinesh Karthik each got more than that for a single IPL season! While games like lawn tennis have worked out the parity between the men’s and women’s game, cricket is a long way away from that.

We need a better contract system for the women players and definitely much more money.

5. Bettering the Test-Ranji ecosystem: The men’s team has played more than 500 Tests. In contrast the number is just 36 for women! The Ranji Trophy is also a strong tournament for men’s First Class cricket. But the focus is more on the shorter formats and the three-day version for women.

Domestic cricket needs a women’s IPL and that’s for sure. However there is no harm in strengthening First Class cricket for women too. Women’s cricket in India is treated on an ad hoc basis and maybe we need a White Paper to change it through and through.

6. Many more inter-school/college tournaments: Boys start playing cricket at an early age and there’s no shortage of coaching camps and inter-school/college tournaments for them. In contrast the opportunities are limited for the girls.

The BCCI doesn’t need to for the men’s version, but maybe it should start getting into organizing inter-school and inter-college tournaments. In fact last year the then BCCI President Anurag Thakur had talked of starting something which he called the University League.

Well women’s cricket needs that more than the men’s version!

(This article appeared in Sify.com)

Why the Trump Russia US election collusion allegation is total bullshit!!!

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Sunil Rajguru

The whole world is getting tired of the cry-babies of America who keep screaming that Russia interfered in their 2016 Presidential elections. You could be forgiven for thinking that America was a totally powerless Third World country which could do nothing but whine and whine all day. Here’s a look at why the whole story is grossly hypocritical and humbug in the first place…

1. America doesn’t just interfere, it straightforward kills. How many times have the CIA tried to kill a foreign leader? The exact number will remain unknown, though one estimate puts in excess of 50 with hundreds of assassination plots.

That’s not including the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, though! There is actually a Wikipedia page titled “Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro” and the number there is a mind-boggling 638! That led to the documentary: 638 Ways to Kill Castro.

The CIA has conducted outright coups in countries as diverse as Iran, Guatemala and Congo. It tries to meddle in the affairs of every country on Earth and has reduced certain countries like Pakistan to mere puppets.

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was beaten to death. He was stripped naked and abused. Gruesome videos were put up on YouTube. When the then Secretary State Hillary Clinton heard the news, she almost broke into a jig with the famous line: We came, we saw, he died! That led to the famous parody video. After all this, for Hillary, the Democrats, liberals and mainstream media to shout from the rooftops that Russia interfered in their elections after presenting virtually zero proof to the world is the joke of the century.

2. But if it really did happen, Obama is to blame. Let’s just say for a moment that the Russians really did interfere in the elections. Let’s accept it as an absolute truth. Well, Donald Trump was just another businessman running for President till November 8, 2016.

Who allowed the hacking to happen? The attack happened under whose watch? The buck stops with? The plain answer is the then US President Barack Obama. He let the country down and it is curious that no-one is even mentioning his name let alone attacking him for this gross and grave security breach.

Secondly, even if he couldn’t have done much to stop it, what was he doing from Election Day November 8, 2016 to Inauguration Day January 20, 2017? That’s a good two months and more. Obama could have easily have instituted an enquiry or started the process of sanctions against Russia.

But he didn’t. If the hacking happened, then Obama and his entire administration look really bad. If the hacking didn’t happen, then the Democrats, liberals and media look really bad. That’s a lose-lose situation for Trump haters!

3. Even if you prove Russia interfered, Trump is another story. There is another problem even if you prove that Russia rigged the election. As mentioned above, Obama, his administration and his intelligence will look bad. But then how do you prove that Russia did it at the behest of current US President Trump? You’d need solid proof for that.

A. Russia hacked the American elections.

B. Russia did it at the behest of Trump.

Right now they haven’t even begun proving to the world that A. happened. In fact that’s why there’s a theory that Obama probably had something to go on regarding Russian interference, but didn’t pursue it because he knew he couldn’t link it to Trump.

4. But then again anybody can hide their digital footprints. Spook versus spook was murky as it is. In cyberspace things have become even murkier. Anyone can pretend to be Russian and hack into the system. The CIA can themselves stage an internal coup and blame the Russians. There are many Hollywood movies along these lines.

In fact it was none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin who stated the following with his panel discussion with NBC’s Megyn Kelly when she presented the Russia hacking story as a fact saying it had Russia’s fingerprints…

“What fingerprints? Say prints of hooves, horns, whose prints are those? About IP addresses, you can just make them up. Do you know how many specialists are there now? They can make it so that it will be from your home address. Your children sent it. They can make it so that it will be from your home address. Your children sent it. Your youngest three-year-old child! It’s organized so that precisely your three-year-old girl made the attack. Such specialists now exist in the area of technology that they will make up anything, and then they will accuse anyone…”

Putin has a point. This is something that will probably never be conclusively settled.

5. Nobody even knows what they mean by “hacked”. Did Russia hack Hillary’s email server and embarrass her? Did Russia hack the computers of the Democratic National Committee and create bad press? Was Russia colluding with that “hack” Julian Assange of WikiLeaks? Did Russia hack the electronic voting machines of America? If so, how many machines were hacked and how many votes did they manage to switch in how many states? What about swing states with paper ballots?

Everybody uses the word “hacking” to mean different things. Plus nobody has given any sort of details of how Russia could have rigged the voting machines in the first place. Hack: A cheap, mediocre, or second-rate practitioner, especially in the fields of journalism and literature: a charlatan or incompetent. (Urban Dictionary)

6. So little evidence so far that it’s virtually fake news. Like “Show me the money!” everyone is shouting “Show me the proof!” No concrete evidence has been presented to the public. (The CIA may have something, but we don’t know) It is just a stream endless baseless stories that are based on a stream of endless anonymous (fake?) sources.

That pretty much sounds like a quote misattributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Putin said much more in the above exchange with Megyn…

“Are you out of your mind? There’s nothing concrete, just zero, zero, nothing at all. Simply surprising! It’s simply some kind of hysteria, and you just can’t stop. Do you need to be given some pill? Does anyone have a pill? Give them a pill!”

(At this stage even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of the participants of the panel, couldn’t stop laughing!) “

…And the problem is not with us. The problem is within American politics. That’s the problem. Trump’s team proved to be more effective during the election campaign… And the other team miscalculated. They do not want to admit this mistake… It’s easier to say: We are not guilty, the Russians are guilty. They interfered in our elections.”

He even likened it to a Nazi conspiracy (much like Hollywood star Tim Allen comparing Hollywood to Nazi times)…

“Overall, this reminds me of anti-Semitism: Jews are to blame for everything, you see? You are stupid and can’t do anything, but Jews are to blame.” Ouch!

Then came the sting by Project Veritas that showed a CNN editor admitting it was all bullshit, another CNN Trump hater calling it a nothing burger and a third also talking of Russia as just a ratings game.

7. Ahem, do they really want a President Pence? Everyone knows that this is just an ego battle by Trump haters to push for his impeachment and get him out of the way. But if you do that, then Hillary doesn’t become President, but Mike Pence does.

Pence is a Republican hardliner. Liberals would probably hate him more than Trump. Trump is an ex-Democrat who definitely didn’t lead a conservative lifestyle and got the LGBT flag at the Republican convention. Liberals don’t like Pence’s views on gun control, abortion and LGBT rights. As Indiana Governor, he was against the settlement of Syrian refugees in the state.

If President Pence went even more hardline than Trump, nobody would be able to do anything since they had already thrown down all their cards on the table. The Republican march would continue and they might actually get more sympathy.

Maybe that’s why Trump chose Pence in the first place! He calculates everything. A play presented Trump as a Julius Caesar who gets assassinated. Well these folks definitely don’t know their history. For in real life Julius’ successor Augustus went after all the former’s enemies and finished them off to become the first Emperor of Rome! If Julius Trump is impeached, then Augustus Pence could be much worse for Trump haters!

5 reasons why Narendra Modi + entrepreneurship = Kamaal ki Jodi!

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Sunil Rajguru

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of the most business-friendly Prime Ministers of Independent India. He has been very gung-ho about entrepreneurs right from his days as Gujarat Chief Minister.

Here are some of the reasons why Modi has ensured that entrepreneurship has grown in India and he will continue to do so…

The Gujjubhai business brain: There is an apocryphal story that hundreds of years ago, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama followed a Gujarati trader to discover a sea route to India.

Whatever be the truth of this story, it does symbolize the historic initiative of the traders and merchants of Gujarat. Even today Gujarat is the land of the entrepreneur. Jamsetji Tata in the nineteenth century to Dhirubhai Ambani in the twentieth century to Gautam Adani’s rapid rise in the twenty-first, they all have Gujarat in common.

Entrepreneurship comes naturally to Gujarat and Modi nurtured it in his Gujarat days. Modi took over the State in 2001. He launched Vibrant Gujarat in 2003 where MoUs were signed for an investment for US$14 billion.

That number rapidly rose to US$462 billion in 2011. His critics say that only a fraction of that fructifies. But even that fraction is miles ahead of other states. Modi was very entrepreneur friendly in Gujarat and he’s rapidly replicating the same model for India.

Modi himself could be called an entrepreneur. While his selling tea on a railway platform is romanticized, his father had a tea stall at that time. Later Modi and his brother themselves set up a tea stall near a bus stand.

Minimum Government Maximum Governance: While support from the government is one thing, the entrepreneur many a times just wants as little interference as possible. It may be possible to start a company in no time in many Western countries, but in India one may struggle for months on end without making any headway. The current government is trying to boost entrepreneurs by allowing a business to be incorporated with just one form. Called Form INC-29, the government is trying to enable fast track company registration. The application process for things like the Industrial Entrepreneur’s Memorandum has also been simplified.

The country’s License Raj from 1947 onwards stifled the entrepreneurial spirit and at that time only the first and last Indian Governor-General C Rajagopalachari cried foul. That system was dismantled by Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao from 1991 onwards, but not fully.

Modi seems to have started from where Rao left off. In fact the Planning Commission was seen part and parcel of the old regime and Modi has done away with that too for a more dynamic real-time planning which will help the fast-changing business landscape of India.

Myriad of targeted schemes: Startup India began with Rs 10,000 crore of funds and a sincere effort to reduce red tape for startups with even the Reserve Bank of India getting involved. Interestingly 5 lakh schools will be targeted for innovation programmes. Catch the entrepreneurs young is the mantra.

Make In India will help established business ramp up and new businesses to break out. Stand Up India involves loans of up to Rs 1 crore to those from the SC/ST bracket and women entrepreneurs.

The formation of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship was an innovative concept. Skill India aims to train 40 crore people in various skills by 2022. This involves a National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship among other things.

Former US Secretary of State John Kerry once said that he was particularly impressed with Modi’s slogan of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas. These are some of the components of that concept.

The GST push: For anyone wanting to start their business and immediately go pan-India, GST Goods and Services Tax Bill is a great boon. It proposes a national Value Added Tax and promises to lead to seamless transactions across States and lessening of harassment. The Octroi Raj may finally end.

Modi pushed GST with all his might despite all the opposition and Parliamentary disruptions. Modi has shown a willingness to push for anything he feels will ease business in the country and that will translate into great gains in the long run.

The main takeaway from this is that it’s not just GST, but you can be sure that Modi will push similar bills beneficial for entrepreneurs in the future. While there may be a lot of initial confusion vis-à-vis the GST, it will ultimately settle down to something really good.

Modi is a globe trotter: #Brexit and US President Donald Trump may have made globalization a dirty word, but it will continue in one form or another. In fact now one-on-one deals between countries will be more important than trade pacts.

That’s where Modi’s globe-trotting and chemistry between world leaders will be a real boon. Modi is making the world take notice of us. For the first time ever, India has emerged as the Number 1 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) destination in the world. India attracted FDI to the tune of $63 billion in 2015.

While there are mixed feelings about FDI helping or hindering local business, it may prove beneficial to start ups if handled correctly and they may get foreign investors and tie-ups. Though there are plenty of riders, nevertheless the government has allowed 100% FDI in the e-commerce space.

While we may see many ups and downs, the world is flat and in the long run Modi’s globalization drive will help new businesses coming out of India.

Sunil Rajguru's World

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6 ideas to promote women’s cricket in India

Why the Trump Russia US election collusion allegation is total bullshit!!!

5 reasons why Narendra Modi + entrepreneurship = Kamaal ki Jodi!

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