League of Privileged Indians

Ramachandra Guha questions the choice of Pune and Kochi for the two new franchises in the IPL, arguing in the Kolkata-based Telegraph that neither city has a cricketing reason to get a spot in the Twenty20 tournament. He also asks why the three large north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh have no franchise in the IPL.

... this tournament both reflects and further intensifies a deep divide between the India of wealth and entitlement and the India — or Bharat — of poverty and disenfranchisement. Writing about the dangerous growth of inequality in India, the economist, Amartya Sen, warned some years ago that if present trends continued, half of India would look like the American state of California, the other half like sub-Saharan Africa. Since he made this comment, California has been beset with an acute — and apparently irreversible — fiscal crisis. Perhaps we might then substitute the state of Massachusetts for it. But the point remains; there are indeed two Indias, the one which is awarded IPL franchises, and the other which is not.