Punjabi Antenna
Absorbing remarks on Ranjit Singh
Randeep Wadehra

PTC News has been repeating the Tirchchi Nazar interview with Raj Babbar over the past fortnight; and for good reasons, too. Firstly, because its initial broadcast was overshadowed by the live telecast of the Kabaddi World Cup. Secondly, the filmstar-turned-politician’s mega-serial Maharaja Ranjit Singh has recently gone on air, courtesy Doordarshan. Babbar talked at length on his personal (the love triangle involving Nadira and Smita), professional (his struggle to establish himself in Bollywood) and political lives (his tenures with Samta and Samajwadi Parties before joining the Congress).

All very absorbing, but what made the interview thought provoking were his remarks that the Maharaja was in the same league as emperors Akbar and Ashok. He ruled over a vast land that had 85 per cent Muslim population and only 15 per cent Hindu-Sikh population, and yet succeeded in carrying all the communities with him — a precursor to today’s concept of secularism. An excellent administrator, Ranjit Singh had already shown the path to globalisation when he harnessed the services of Europeans to upgrade his kingdom’s administrative and military superstructures.

Another remarkable aspect of the Maharaja was his mastery of realpolitik — he managed to keep the Afghans and Persians on his western frontiers on the backfoot even as he proved to be a credible deterrent to the expanding British Empire on his eastern frontiers. A real emperor that!

The Punjab State Electricity Board’s unbundling into two separate power corporations, contrary to the expressed fears, created only minor ripples despite the PSEB employees’ strike. Masle on PTC News did a postmortem of the event, focussing on the rooprekha (structure) of the new corporations and also on the consequences of the baggage inherited in the form of work culture and trade unionism. However, there was no critical note on the manner in which the new corporations have been kept as exclusive fiefdoms of politicians.

There was no mention of checks and balances — contemplated or implemented — to prevent political or any other external interferences in the working of the two new entities. Since there was no expert economist in the talk show, we couldn’t learn of economic aspects of the step: Would the existing subsidies and freebies to farmers continue? Incidentally, these generally do not benefit small farmers — the big ones corner all the goodies. How would the work ethics in the new power corporations be improved? How would their respective autonomies be ensured for all time to come?

There were no answers for the simple reason that pertinent questions were not asked, alas. Again, would the state’s economy benefit from this change? Jatinder Pannu, on DD Punjabi’s Khas khabar ek nazar, summed up the scenario in his usual pithy manner, "the essence will remain the same."

The panelists on Zee Punjabi’s Khabarsaar, while dissecting the IPL scene, lamented in chorus the cricket’s degeneration into business. But why should "business" be a dirty word? Commercialisation of sports is now an accepted fact. There are hardly any unpaid/amateur sportspersons participating even in Olympics. Thanks to professionalisation, sports like golf, tennis and football have prospered beyond imagination.

Even cricket has been running on commercial/professional lines for quite some time now. What makes IPL a definitive game changer is that, unlike other sports, the IPL teams are not identified with nationality, regionalism or patriotism. New identities, on the lines of commercial brands, with a hint of regional flavour, have been successfully created. This process can, eventually, spell finis to parochialism.

Unfortunately, the term "business" is bad mouthed because business ethics have been given an indecently hasty burial in the extant case. There is a lesson in this for those in Punjab who are planning to organise kabaddi and hockey tournaments on the IPL format. Let true sporting values prevail.