Hayden, India, Third World

I write this piece, more as an erstwhile post-graduate in economics, than as a cricket journalist. I pen this column as I was mighty amused by the massive outpouring of patriotic sentiments because Aussie opener Matthew Hayden, done with frying fish and making chicken curry, called us poor folks in India a "third world" country.

Some BCCI officials were observed shaking their heads violently in stunned disbelief. "It is an insult to us all Indians" kind of disturbing psychological assessments were made in tearing hurry. For a moment, it seemed we might ask Interpol for an immediate arrest warrant against that burly giant for creating mental scars on a billion people. A Third World country, us? Despite those Hugo Boss outlets in 5-star hotels, Rolls Royce show-rooms, 7 million mobile phones sold a month, multi-billionaires in Forbes list, and foreign exchange reserves overflowing despite the rupee crash? Not to forget the most expensive hotel rooms in the world? Personally, I thought even Raj Thackeray would ask for his instant extradition to India; after all, Mumbai is India's commercial hub, right? How can an Oz batsman in the diminishing November of his career, run down our matra-bhoomi? I expected Shri LK Advani to do a rath-yatra with the sole mission of boycotting Australia from the Commonwealth games; of course, on the shaky assumption that India will still be hosting it.

In the entire infantile hullabaloo, we completely forsake common-sense for strident nationalism. Let us take a deep breath. Matt Hayden is still in a time warp, and has no pretensions of explaining the Laffer curve at Harvard Business School. The truth is that Third World is now considered archaic, only because it got replaced by the new buzzword, "emerging markets". There was a gentleman by the name of Antoine van Agtmael whose attempts at selling a "Third World Equity Fund" had met with disastrous consequences. So he coined a more appropriate term --- emerging markets. It had just the right zing. Said the creative inventor "Racking my brain, at last I came up with a term that sounded more positive and invigorating; emerging markets. "Third World" suggested stagnation, "emerging markets" suggested progress, uplift and dynamism. Since 1980s, the Third World term has become an anachronism, as it signals a class bias of the western world, a symbol of a struggling bunch of perpetual losers. But the truth is that actually it is just a nomenclature issue. And what's in a name?

May be, Matt Hayden ought to be told however that these "Third World" countries have 62 companies listed in the Fortune 500 ranking companies. And that in the next ten years, Accenture consulting predicts that 150 companies from BRIC countries (Matt, please do not confuse that with something as prosaic as a certain part of the human anatomy) will dominate the famous list of 500.

But anyway, let me cut the chase, this is not meant to be a boring summary of an economics lesson. All I know is that a certain Yuvraj Singh as of now is making the towering First World country of England into a "submerging market". On the mat, as they say.