An African Tale not a tell tale for BCCI

The recent travails of the president of the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) around allegations of nepotism, match-fixing and fraud raises a point: What exactly is wrong when issues around trust and good faith crop up?

Admittedly one man cannot be held responsible for the actions of one of his many people. Thus the fact that there is a certain son-in-law, who has quite clearly been an 'owner-manager' in the president's IPL team (Chennai Super Kings), is now accused of match-fixing and offering information to bookies... and he must be defended by the father-in-law in his own personal capacity.

The Indian media witch-hunt demanding the resignation of BCCI president N Srinivasan for an yet unproven case is decidedly over-the-top and reflects hidden agendas fuelled by the not-so neutral forces of Indian cricket. But that in itself leads one to explore some sinister points:

• Why is a job so honorary this coveted and craved for?
• Why does it remain the preserve of wealthy, elite groups and not offered to ex-cricketers and their likes?
• Why do efforts to dislodge existing incumbents become a national pastime?
• Why do petty scandals become a matter of intense scrutiny and political meddling?
• Allegations and counter allegations fly and the frenzied media bays for your blood. Yet, why is satiation achieved with the mere changing of deck chairs?

Bringing an ex-BCCI head back as the interim chief to supervise ‘internal’ enquiries is a reflection of how closed the club really is, especially when one sees that the ‘successor' was himself embroiled in past allegations around financial improprieties which were never fully resolved.

What does this really tell us? The obvious perhaps: That there is nothing honourable about this job. It represents power, control and influence; not merely over the future of the game and its players but over where money can be made.

In the case of the current president, the question really is whether his company (India Cements) should have been allowed to bid for an IPL franchise while he was an office bearer. There is an unwritten dictum that should be non-negotiable: You don’t become an office bearer in an organisation where its decisions can lead you to gain commercially. That is why there are stringent disclosure rules for even non-executive chairpersons of large corporations. But BCCI is ‘non-profit-making’ and its office bearers are simply doing a public duty!

Sponsors of cricket have a responsibility to probe and clean this. But the BCCI is so powerful that even a hint of dissent could disqualify a corporate from ever being able to sponsor anything related to the game again, and thereby losing out on the biggest ‘eyeball’ opportunity in India.

This is frightening and has all the attributes of a mafia. That is why the principle of silence (Omertà) in cricket land prevails and nobody, least of all, ex-cricketers who still earn their pensions from the Board or lucrative cricket-related assignments, will ever raise their heads above the parapet.

Not healthy at all.

I am reminded of a situation that I had to deal with in the little African country of Botswana many years ago. The group I worked for had a pretty profitable insurance and asset management business there. One fine day it was discovered that four senior managers had done something pretty juvenile.

In a small market with an even smaller stock exchange (with only 12 listed companies, one of which was our little business), these senior expatriate managers decided to put a 'buy' rating on the company stock they worked for. Being a small exchange, the buy order took a while to execute and by the time it was actually completed, the internal company policy around 'closed period' had already started. Technically that would have been illegal and bordered on insider trading had the actual order not been placed before the closed period.

Till someone pointed out there indeed was a problem. The actual quantity of the original order had been changed as the concerned broker had called and asked them if it was okay to execute on a smaller quantity as not enough was available in the market. And that conversation happened two days into the closed period. Arguably this act constituted a new order and an infringement of the company's internal policies which left it open to allegations around insider trading.

A real dilemma!

A small community, a relatively large company on the exchange, managing pensioner money to boot, respected for its governance and transparency and four of its senior guys going and doing something so naive? Nobody quite believed any willful wrong had been done or any major benefit had been attained by anyone. Yet, the question of trust and its perception came to haunt us.

Not dissimilar to the BCCI issue or many others that keep cropping up. Except in this unheralded, inconspicuous African country, the media took up the cause, the stock exchange demanded an answer and the company carried out a full scale, truly independent enquiry after suspending these four errant individuals with immediate effect. The investigations were swift, the analysis around it prompt, and the consensus arrived at was largely that no real wrong had been done.

But a vital part of the social contract that binds us all and makes us believe that those in authority will do the right thing, that elusive concept around faith and trust, had been broken. It’s a bit like how we believe in the local cop or the local GP or the pilot who flies you around the world. We trust them implicitly and they have to reciprocate that trust unconditionally, unquestioningly and unequivocally. That is what a social contract is all about and we felt that was what had been broken.

End result? All four concerned had to resign.

They walked out with their heads held high and went on to achieving greater things in their professional careers; all because a lesson had been learnt, a tangible apology had been given, trust had been restored and everyone had come out wiser.

India, in its many forms and in scandals, has to examine this principle of social contract. It has to come to terms with the non-negotiable rights of a citizen around an intangible contract that gives them the right to live, sleep, serve and be served. It has to, without question, emerge with a belief in the concept of what is right and not what needs to be proven right.

In some things you are not innocent till you are proven guilty, after all.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.