When I read Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray's letter to Sharad Pawar, Union Agriculture Minister cum President, Board of Control for Cricket India (BCCI), I shed most of my other inhibitions against Thackeray as he spelt sense. Unfortunately, the senior Maharashtrian Union Cabinet Minister, who works less for his Agriculture Ministry, but puts in his whole might for the Indian cricket that he has made it possible in his time the celebrated Indian players now being reduced to sheer commodity for auction sale. From history, I learnt about incidents during dictator Hitler's time that despite his desperate efforts to annihilate the Jewish race through bullets and gas chambers, there were many left and they were then herded in large ships and ferried to slave markets in Istanbul. The worst of epithets were reportedly used by the Pharoes men while bidding for the Jews. Perhaps nowhere in history such kind of worst bartering in human trade occurred. And that is past. In America, when a slave was finally elevated to the position of President, Abraham Lincoln resolved to put enactment proclaiming abolition of slavery as the first under his signature. Of course, slavery is no more in the world in that worst form, but it took another shape and finally evolved as out-sourcing et.al. Ever since the opening up of India to reforms and market economy, whether it was through the Congress rule under PV Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh duo from 1991-95 or later on under the coalition era under the NDA and now the UPA, our economic policies are mostly guided by right of centric capitalist forces. The Captains of Indian Industries are the driving force behind Indian economy. With the result, the Indian Stock Market turned to be the barometer of our economic stakes. But the irony is that it totally depends on the mood and development that takes place in Dow Jones (US Stock Exchange) from time to time. We have witnessed several `black-Fridays' and `black- Monday' where the bulls were tamed by bears and the over-enthusiastic stock brokers and shareholders found beating their chest and staring up in the sky exhaustively over the sudden deprivation of their money through the market's volatility. The latest fiasco was the Reliance Power shares in which what happened needs no re-iteration. Let that be as it may, but since I am basically on the ICL V/s IPL dilemma, I need to caution every sensible Indian about the danger that is hidden in this latest trend in Indian cricket. I am at a loss to understand where should one trace the hithertofore `Team-India' as it is bidden away by the Mallyas, Ambanies, King Khans, Preity Zintas et al. About Vijay Mallya, I have special reason to believe that he is a good bidder, looking at his past history in horse-racing in Chepauk Race-Course Club. He knows the best race-horses and nurtures them in his stud farms.

And then we know he improved further in his infamous distillery (Abkhari) business he bears the trade mark of `United Breviaries' (UB) from which now again positioned himself as the `King Fisher' group of Airlines to explore international airways. The emergence now of Mallya to throw up his highest bid for Indian cricket's hot-horse `the Jharkhand brand `Dhoni' for rupees six crores for the Chennai team clearly shows the intention behind. Now, that when the team India is auctioned and distributed amongst India's new metro-based millionaires, as cautioned by the senior Thackeray and also echoed by one of the seniormost legal luminaries- Justice VR Krishna Iyer, time is not far off that a trend of auctioning the best of our talents- art, culture, bureaucracy, intelligentsia etc would set in to open up new vistas of the moneyed class bidding even the sovereignty of this great nation for a premium. Where are we heading to?