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[Priya]

While they are given a “golden handshake”, the most successful of India’s skippers, struggling to keep his place in the side, was said to have been offered selection for the series against the Aussies as an “honourable exit”

There are dates on which words acquire dramatically altered meanings. “Towers”, for example, stopped meaning only exceptionally tall buildings after September 9, 2001. We now have — nearly as striking — an India-specific illustration.

From July 18, 2005, to just days ago, there was no doubt what the simple word “deal” signified to the nation at large. From October 7, 2008, however, India has been engaged in an animated discussion of a deal entirely different from the nuclear one, into which Manmohan Singh and George Bush entered over three years ago. It was a date with destiny for Sourav Ganguly. The moment he announced his decision to retire from international cricket after the current Test series against the Aussies, the media broke into speculation about the “deal” behind the move — and, boy, has it caught on.

If you ask the average man in the street about the “deal”, as some in the media did, he would not talk necessarily about Bush signing a US Bill to enable a bilateral nuclear accord with India. The respondent is as likely to react to an allegedly unsigned pact between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the player with a reputation for belligerent captaincy. Mention of the “deal” may still provoke many to declaim about India’s dream of superpowerdom (with spoilsports like this scribe demurring). But the D-word may also set many others discussing consequences of the darkly insinuated move for Indian cricket.

The speculation or suspicion is that Sourav had become the victim of an unannounced “voluntary retirement scheme”, similar to the one designed to persuade state and public sector employees to depart long before their due superannuation dates. While they are given a “golden handshake”, the most successful of India’s skippers, struggling to keep his place in the side, was said to have been offered selection for the series against the Aussies as an “honourable exit”.

The main difference between the two “deals” must be obvious. The debate on the supposed Board-Sourav pact has revealed three distinct sections of opinion — those who believe that the “deal” did take place, those who do not believe it did, and those who would like to believe it did not.

No such mystery ever shrouded the nuclear deal. Very different was the three-way division on this subject — with some believing that the “deal” would be done, some believing it would not be, and some wishing to believe it would be defeated in world fora dominated by Bush and friends.

Also obvious is the fact that one deal leads to another. The presumed Sourav pact is seen as a signal to other senior players, and current Test captain Anil Kumble has almost confirmed the possibility of his following in the footsteps of his predecessor and making this his farewell series as well. The retirement of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman (once India’s answer to the Aussie attack) may not be a remote prospect. An era will end, if Sachin Tendulkar walks out into the sunset, too.

Will this mas exodus, that will rob Team India totally of a mature look, be allowed to happen? Or will the Sourav departure lead to a deal among the surviving seniors?

While the pundits ponder the pose, no mystery has shrouded the political sequels to the nuclear deal, either. Singh, of course, has emulated Bush’s success in winning bipartisan backing for the nuclear deal, significantly helped by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s deceptive show of opposition to it. A more open deal to save the deal and the Manmohan government, in the wake of the Left’s withdrawal of support, was struck with the Samajwadi Party, with maverick Amar Singh playing a media-entertaining part in it all ever since.

The Left, too, for its part, tried a deal to defeat the deal, by making common cause with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, politically unreliable, though an acknowledged leader of the lowest and most oppressed of castes. The attempt has not made much advance, but has not been abandoned.

Noteworthy, meanwhile, is a not so obvious difference between the nuclear and cricket “deals”. Astute commentators, analysing the Sourav affair, are all agreed on one thing. No one of them doubts that “deals” of this kind — in the dictionary sense of secret and underhand arrangements — are not in keeping with the dignity of players and are detrimental to the interests of Indian cricket. Not so with the nuclear coup, on which New Delhi is complimenting itself so profusely.

Security and energy specialists and experts have subjected this issue to much scrutiny. Very few of them, however, seem worried that the “deal” was struck without consulting the people of India — and that it may now be signed without keeping a solemn promise to bring it back to the parliament after passing all other stages.

Is such a deal in keeping with the spirit of democracy? The question does not seem to concern the more conspicuous commentators. They, on the contrary, are assuring the powers-that-be that the nuclear deal will be no “people’s issue” and thus make no difference in the elections.

The mother of deals, of course, is the one between the elite and the establishment that denies any say for the people in matters of life and death that nuclear militarism spells.

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint