Women empowerment?

Undoubtedly, most of you will find the topic too repetitive and boring. The reason is simple: any step taken by any political party has the aim of women empowerment, even though it does not in reality lead to the same. All debates and discussion has this key idea of women empowerment. The female panelists can be found to be frequently using the phase "this is against women empowerment". Most of the female celebrities in Bollywood involve in parties on trivial occasions and tag them as "Mah friend birthday #get_together #WOMEN_EMPOWERMENT".

Well, I do not have any issue with the use of the term. Infact, it is a good sign that people are discussing on such matters. The more people discusses such matters, the better it is for the society to realise the concerns faced by women. India, on this front as well, is doing fairly good as can be seen from the growing discourse on this topic in daily course of life, particularly on the high decibel media. If everything is fine, then why am I writing this article? I do not want to add another layer to the already noisy discussion, but I want to raise a different point related to the same.

The point is: do we really understand the meaning of the highly celebrated term "women empowerment"? Does it include male bashing in it? Or does it include instagramming nude photos? Or, to add, does it also cover shouting at a male colleague for no reason just to show that women have indeed achieved empowerment? Why am I making these points is simply because I find the so-called empowered women as greatly using social media to highlight such activities and call them as consequence of empowerment. For instance, a well-known female bollywood actress recently instagrammed her nude photos terming it as celebration of feminity and women empowerment.

I have no issue with anyone using the social media for making people aware of their lifestyles. It may include partying on beach with their celebrated friends, highlighting their disputes with their male collegues or even for that matter, tweeting their nude pictures. But, I am unable to digest when they call these events as a sign of empowerment. I think such ideas gives a wrong and distorted image of the idea of empowerment.

Having discussed all these, it is time to understand the meaning of empowerment and why the above instances are not empowerment in true sense of the term. Empowerment, in simple terms, can mean that women are increasingly able to take decisions for themselves. They are no more guided by the dictates of their male authorities at home to decide for themselves and their own future, future of their children, their sexuality and so on. They can walk, and walk with all authority at their command, on equal terms with their male colleagues in offices and public discourse.

In this context, one can see the examples of the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry Dr. Kiran Bedi, the ICICI bank chief Ms. Chanda Kochha, Biocon Chief Ms. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw among others. They have created a separate niche for themselves and have shown the world the meaning of empowerment with their deeds. They did what they wanted in life and never allowed the societal barriers to come their way.

The point that I am focussing on through these examples is that these empowered women have worked with their colleagues as equals. They became the chief of their respective institutions but have not indulged in criticising their male conterparts to prove their point. Neither, they take to social media websites to highlight their girlish party to drive their point of empowerment. This is because, if such activities are empowerment, in that case only a handful of the women in India are empowered. And sadly... the meaning of empowerment gets reduced to two things: (1) access to social media website, (2) a photographer to click photos. Then what could be the name given to such activities? Well, at best, it could be called a form of growing feminism, which is technically different from the modes of empowerment.

Empowerment, to conclude, means that both  male and female counterparts are equal in all spheres. No gender is superior to the other. There is no point in showing the other in bad light. For this, India needs a co-operative and collaborative approach and not a conflict approach. This can come when we, all individuals, respect the other person in family, at office and in public life. It certainly does not include male bashing by the other group or female bashing by the traditionally dominant group in the society. Because neither of the approach will lead us to an equal society.

Test Cricket and its future

The first Test match was played in 1877 in Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), nearly a hundred years senior to the One-Day Internationals (ODIs). The test cricket, over the years, has faced many ups and downs. Nevertheless, it has survived till present times. However, of-late there has been growing concern over the future of test cricket in light of the dwindling viewers in test matches.

The reasons for the above are not very difficult to decipher. These include the growing interest in the ODIs and the recent surge of T20 internationals, especially the Indian Premier League (IPL), Big Bash League (BBL) and so on. The growth of limited overs cricket has resulted in the mismatch of rewards. While, on one hand, such high-intensity T20 matches provides greater rewards to the T20 specialists, the test cricket, on the other hand, is surviving mainly because of its inherent strength. This is because test cricket is indeed a real "test" of skills, techniques, patience which are enjoyed by the classical batsmen and bowlers of modern times.

But, as experts believe, the future of test cricket can be at stake if it remains dependent solely on the beauty of the game and do not take some immediate actions either in the form of increasing the remuneration or finding other ways out.

Well, optimism is still prevailing around in view of the steps contemplated by the the International Cricket Council (ICC), the international governing body of cricket and also some of the national boards. For instance, a well-thought out strategy has been to conduct a World Test Championship. However, the clouds of doubts are still hovering over this decision and any concrete plan is yet to be made. The sooner the decision is made, the better it will be for the test cricket. The reason is that this is a good step as the recognised test teams will make an effort to be in the top four (the top four test teams vis-a-vis a certain cut-off date will play the championship). This is expected to promote test cricket and may also enhance viewership.

The ICC, with a similar aim, had also thought of the Two-Tier system in test cricket. Barring aside the technical details, this system would have helped in grouping of teams in two categories, who would play among themselves certain number of test matches. However, this has not found support from Indian, Bangladesh and the Sri Lankan Cricket Board because the system would not allow the low ranked teams to play with the high ranked teams. This, according to Bangladesh Cricket Board, would have defeated the purpose of improving the low-ranked teams performance in test cricket.

This system has been worked upon and a new idea has been doing rounds whereby the winner of the first group would play with the winner of the other group. This is an improvement and is expected to dilute the loopholes in the two-tier system. But, this view is yet to see the light of the day.

In this direction, the BCCI has also contributed by increasing the remuneration of Indian players per match to 15 lakhs. This will, hopefully, retain the interests of players in test cricket, especially among the young generations. However, this has not yet become a norm among other cricket boards might be because of lack of financial strength. But, sooner or later, this is a necessary evil for test cricket.

At the same time, as pointed out by Rahul Dravid, former cricketer, scheduling of test matches should also be given more priority i.e more test matches be scheduled in a year. At present, the presence of ODIs and T20s in the scheduled list of matches have increased and is one of the reasons of declining interest both among the viewers and the players vis-a-vis test cricket.

Well, in my opinion, whatever steps are taken, one important aspect to keep in mind is that test cricket should be competitive enough to generate interest. This is because viewers should feel the same heat and excitement as are witnessed in T20s and ODIs. The question, however, is- how to do this?

Keeping in mind the recent test matches, including the ongoing India-Australia test series, I think a fair competition between bat and ball has a greater probability to generate the required thrill. This also has a greater chance of providing a result, an important indicator to make test matches more popular and interesting.

In addition to this, more test matches can be conducted under the floodlights to provide the audience a better feel of the game as it is there in the limited overs game. Other innovative measures such as usage of the pink ball can be adopted in some of the matches. These small changes might help in reducing the monotony that is generally associated with the test cricket.