Forget about Ganguly, Save All India Radio

The true scandal in this Test series is not the omission of Sourav Ganguly, it is the exclusion of All India Radio from broadcasting cricket across the country. As David Hopps points out

'Briefly, the situation is this. When the Indian government allowed commercial radio stations, it gave All India Radio exclusive rights to news coverage. Cricket commentary is classified - dubiously - as news, so only All India Radio can bid for the rights. Nimbus wanted £10m over four years, All India Radio offered much less, so Nimbus has decided the airwaves must remain silent. "It is very sad," said Pradeep, "that the history of the first Sikh to play cricket for England cannot be aired to the far corners of the Punjab."'

'But in Nagpur, All India Radio has been reduced to occasional mock commentary because of a commercial dispute with Nimbus, holder of the rights to cricket in India. Rights-issue disputes are dusty affairs, but this is what the Indian parliament should have been debating yesterday instead of posturing over the comments of Greg Chappell, India's coach, about the former captain Sourav Ganguly in the Guardian.'

And not a word of this in the Indian press...

On the India-US Nuclear Deal

I was feeling quite ambivalent about the India-US nuclear deal. While a part of me was proud at America's recognition of India's unique position in the world, and the generally acceptable way in which we've conducted our foreign affairs, the other part of me wondered if encouraging India to make more use of nuclear energy was the right way to go about doing this. Rep Ed Markey's (D- MA) entry on Huffington Post has convinced me of the folly of the deal. The two most pertinent points of his article are that -

a. India does not need nuclear energy as a reward for good behaviour:

"There is absolutely no need for us to start exempting India from nuclear nonproliferation controls - and sell them nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel that can be made into bombs - under the guise of reducing their energy shortfalls when there are much better alternatives available."

I would agree with this, creating the nuclear option for energy production in India may not be the best way to meet our rising energy needs, especially since there has been so little debate and investigation about the feasibility of safe widespread nuclear power in India, and the efficiency of the production methods available to us.

b. While it may be tempting to reward India with this, violating the internationally recognised goal of non-proliferation, though in an ostensible good cause, may lead to far more chaotic results:

"We cannot expect countries like Iran and North Korea to comply with the rules when we help India break them. If we adopt special rules for our friends, we can expect Russia and China to adopt special rules for their friends. "Bilateral Special Exemptions" will replace the standards of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and a nuclear chaos of no rules at all will be the end result."

This too is true. The reason why we have certain international rules (and non-proliferation is not just a treaty-based rule, but also a customary norm in international law) is that a certain order be maintained. Violating these rules, even for a good cause, would lead to unintended disorder (Iraq, anyone?)

Go read it here.