When the last ball of Sachin’s swansong, the India West
Indies Mumbai test match gets bowled, we would have seen a deluge of media
frenzy - celebrating India’s favorite sport’s favorite icon – Sachin
Tendulkar.
To say that Sachin has achieved a lot would be an
understatement. He has played longer than any player could have imagined and
scored more than any statistician could have visualized.
To a nation shorn of confidence in the international arena,
he has proven that we can be the best.
He has almost single handedly changed the way we Indians
consume and dream about Cricket. Ranchi, Guntur, Ahmednagar, Meerut, Kochi,
Bhubaneshwar would have hardly dreamt of producing cricketers donning India’s
national colors.
A significant role in this transformation of national belief
can be ascribed to Tendulkar.
Hats off Tendulkar, not many in the world can lay claim to
the fact that they have changed the way a nation thinks, acts and behaves!
With the enormous respect and goodwill that Tendulkar
commands, it would be befitting that he uses it for the National good when he
bids goodbye to the cricket field.
Because, India does require super heroes outside the Cricket
field too!
Despite making significant economic strides, India is in a
social regress mode. India does not know how to treat its women well.
The statistics about India’s dwindling sex ratio are
shamefully stunning. While overall, the sex ratio (number of women per 1000
men) has gone up from 933 in 2001 to 943 in 2011, the child sex ratio (number
of girls per 1000 boys, in the less than 6 age group) has gone down from 927 to
919!
We are killing girls even before they are born!
If this continues, we are hurtling towards a demographic
disaster of epic proportions. This is
India’s biggest challenge.
There is an urgent need for social transformation at the
human behavioral level. India needs to
learn to care for women, respect them and make them feel they are needed. It
needs to do so for its own survival.
India needs men of stature to guide it in the right
direction.
Who better than Sachin to take up this task with the same
passion that he has wielded the bat with? Who better than SRT to tell us that
our mindset needs to change?
Cricketer and Social transformation, what is the link, one
might ask?
Remember, Tendulkar is no ordinary mortal, he is God!
The God owes it to the believers to take them on the right path.
