Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Somewhat similar is how most ruling classes across the planet, especially in the Third World countries, behave.
At a time when Pakistan’s largest metropolis, Karachi, and three of its provinces Sind, Punjab, and Baluchistan are facing acute water scarcity due to drought, and Lahore the second most populated city has just overcome the worst smog throughout the winter the powers that be is busy holding the Day-Night Champions Trophy tournament under floodlight. How criminally insensitive can the rulers be in a country that is confronting a chronic electricity shortage?
Why just blame Pakistan, the situation in other densely populated and poor South Asian countries is equally grim yet nobody is realizing that we are wasting thousands of megawatts of electricity annually in sporting extravaganza. And that too when we are not supplying sufficient power to children for doing school homework or farmers to irrigate their agricultural land or industries, hospitals, etc. to run.
The example of Pakistan deserves greater attention as this country has been hit hardest by climate change. The devastating four-month-long flood of 2022 which completely paralyzed its heartland should
have come as an eye-opener, but the ruling elite are looking the other way around and are more inclined towards ‘branding’ the country for some ulterior objective.
Pakistan suffered a loss of 40 billion US dollars in the 2022 deluge rated among the costliest natural calamity in world history. The official death toll was 1,739 and rendered millions homeless. The impact of rivers originating from two loftiest mountain ranges of the globe, the Himalayas and Hindukush, is enormous. They are wreaking havoc almost every year.
Area of Darkness
Load-shedding is a perennial problem across Pakistan as the country is struggling to produce electricity. It is taking loan after loan from the International Monetary Fund, yet its affluent class relishes in holding such sporting jamborees.
As cricket and religion have become national addictions in South Asia the masses are made to blindly fulfill the wishes of the governments of the day—be it in Pakistan or India or anywhere else. Thus, this is the best way to distract the attention of the people from serious issues such as poverty, hunger, unemployment, homelessness, etc.
In neighbouring India, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath refuted the alarm expressed by the National Green Tribunal bench over the Central Pollution Control Board report on the quality of
water in Ganga and Yamuna in Prayagraj. Claiming that the Sangam water is fit for drinking Yogi termed this as a move to malign the Kumbh Mela and Sanatan Dharma. What he could not explain is why the government agencies are engaged in this campaign against the Hindu religion.
Nobody is asking to burn cricketing-kit to ashes and immerse them in any river holy or not so holy.
Test cricket has been going on since 1877 that is before the electrification of even the most advanced country in the world. The earliest version of the bulb was developed by self-educated Thomas Elva Edison of the United States in 1879.
So what is the harm in playing cricket in the daytime, say between 10 in the morning and 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening? Let the rich and thinly populated countries do whatever they like, we in South Asia can
afford this wastage of natural resources only at a much higher price. Do not we know how many millions of rupees or say taka we spent on building power plants? Of late, producing and selling/exporting
electricity has become a serious bone of contention among the countries of South Asia. Needless to highlight the darker side of the role played by big private players in this business.
Are not we aware of the sheer amount of coal and water required to produce electricity? Lakhs of people are displaced and thousands of acres of fertile land are rendered barren by fly ash coming out of thermal
power stations. We are building huge dams and barrages in the highland of quake-prone Himalayas and Hindukush to produce this energy.
The rich and powerful are busy wasting this energy by organizing Day-Night matches, be it of the Champions Trophy, Indian Premier League, or any other sporting event. They are oblivious of the environmental and material costs.
Absurd logic
With the media in control, the capitalists have fantastic arguments to promote Day-Night matches. They would say that they are being held in such a way so that one can watch them after working in the day time. No, this is, to borrow from William Shakespeare, an excellent falsehood deliberately spread by the vested interest. The Day-Night matches usually start at 2:30 in the afternoon, but the spectators leave their homes for the stadium even before mid-noon, thus there is no opportunity to go to the office, shop, school, or college on that particular day. Not only that, but by the time they returned home it would be around midnight. The school-going child may wake up late and thus miss the class the next morning.
But all these changes in the match scheduled from morning to evening to Day-Night have been made keeping in mind the television viewership and advertisements. Poor common masses are not aware of the capitalistic design to exploit them.
Be it India or Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh there is a craze to build stadiums with floodlights even in relatively smaller towns. Hundreds of crores are being spent on them even when these stadiums hardly get any opportunity to host Day-Night matches or any other sporting events. Often charges of corruption are levelled in their construction. All in the name of development.
The environmentalists are busy holding conferences, seminars, and workshops in the centrally air-conditioned hotels not knowing that they are themselves victims of the dirty game being played by the
corporate bosses of the world. Hardly any of them is questioning why expensive energy is being wasted when the game could have been played under the sunlight.
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