Offbeat Take - Street protests and Burning effigies

If there is one thing about which everyone and his uncle has something to say these days, its Sourav Ganguly. Should Ganguly be picked to play for India? Its like folklore with so many sobriquets to his name - Prince of Kolkata, Maharaj, God on the offside, and what have you! The Bhadralok is completely shaken up seeing how their Maharaj is being treated. But I'm not talking about only Dada here.

So here's a Conspiracy theory I have, and don't just laugh it off!!

Here's what's been happening each time the selectors announce an Indian team minus Ganguly. The people come out on the street and burn effigies of Chairman of selectors Kiran More and Coach Greg Chappel. Each time. Its there for all of us to see on all news channels, who are always ready to fall over each other to show the reactions of the man-on the-street first. "Remember, we brought it first", they say!

But looking at the goings-on off late, its no more just about Dada and his fans. There seems to be a lot more at stake.

The comrades are up in arms in their reds and with their sickles on the streets of Kolkata. But I suspect they are just using Ganguly. I think what they are really doing is trying to protect the effigy-making industry in the manufacturing sector and the professional protester industry in the service sector. Yeah, you read it right, the effigy-making and the professional protester industries.

After all, the Left is all for the workers and their rights, right? So here's a new cottage industry that has taken shape that has provided employment to so many unemployed people.

And its not just the Left which uses their services, the whole spectrum does - left, right, centre, everybody.

So far the demand for effigies was very restricted. But now its growing, and how! People want to bat for Dada and burn effigies of More and Chappel. Minority baiters want to protest against the Polish media for the Prophet cartoons by burning effigies of the publishers. Conspiracy theorists want to protest the alleged American hegemony by burning the effigy of George Bush. Supporters of Amma want to burn effigies of Karunanidhi and vice-versa. Animal activists want to burn the effigy of Salman Khan. The list goes on. So there is money to be made from the protesters.

Also, the industry is maturing too. Effigies no more look like the non-descript scarecrows. They seem to resemble the real people. Like the Salman one had no shirt and Amma's was rotund and had a shiny gown. So making them is a skilled profession now.

Some of us want them to stop bringing their protests out on the streets. But what happens to the effigy makers then? So they have to protest. And so controversies have to go on.

Besides there is the allied industry of the pay-per-protestor business model, where you can find people to protest for whatever you want as long as you pay them by the hour! So the show must go on.

Finally, I wonder what will happen if we bring up the issue of whether we must allow foreign players in the effigy making and the pay-per-protestor sector? Will they hate it, because its competition? Or will they love it, for they cannot have a more close-to-heart cause to burn effigies and protest against, than this?