The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a new six-week cricket competition scheduled for April. Not sure of the details but there’s eight teams, all based in Indian cities but containing a mix of foreign and local players. Each team is owned by a corporation or consortium which has purchased a franchise; the eight franchises total in excess of $US720 million. A ten-year deal to broadcast the IPL has cost two media outlet an astonishing $US1.026 billion. Players are ’auctioned’ and purchased by the team franchises for extraordinary amounts, e.g. Mahendra Singh Dhoni $US1.5 million, Andrew Symonds, $US1.35 million, Sachin Tendulkar $US1.12 million.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme reports:

Nearly 50 percent of the world’s hungry live in India, a low-income, food-deficit country. Around 35 percent of India’s population – 350 million – are considered food-insecure, consuming less than 80 percent of minimum energy requirements. Nutritional and health indicators are extremely low. Nearly nine out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and anaemia. Anaemia in pregnant women causes 20 percent of infant mortality. More than half of the children under five are moderately or severely malnourished, or suffer from stunting. 

At least all those anaemic, stunted and malnourished Indians will be able to watch some good cricket as they wither away.