The Indian Premier League (IPL) is the new celebrity victim on the block. Just because this business entails television screening of working professionals in an atmosphere full of fun and frolic, does it make it the ‘only’ non-essential business in these water-critical times?

It surely explains why we started counting the litres spent on watering cricketing-pitches but not the water required in the making of cars or beer.

Should we file a PIL against them as well? Consider this: when Tatas shifted their production base from Bengal to Gujarat it caused a national furore, whereas if BCCI is planning to shift its base for IPL to some other country, we just manage to raise an eyebrow?

Money ball

The American Appraisal India Pvt. Ltd, a brand valuation and a tax and finance advisory services company, estimated the economic value of IPL to be of $3.2 billion (in 2014), which translates to nearly ₹21,000 crore at today’s dollar value. Also, according to the recently published FICCI-KPMG Report on Indian Media & Entertainment Industry, IPL generated close to ₹800 crore of just advertisement revenue a year.

Now, if we just do some simple math based on the water consumption required to achieve the above levels of business for, let’s say, a car factory, IPL won’t even touch 10 per cent levels of water consumption required to produce those many cars, including the year-round maintenance of the grounds. Thus, just because we do not get to see how much water is consumed by other industries on television, we not only start thinking about the water required for the IPL pitches but also that it is a criminal waste of water.

The media and entertainment Industry in India is poised to grow at a CAGR of 13.9 per cent from 2014 to 2019, which is an impressive number by itself, let alone the comparisons, and television roughly contributes half of it. Researchers in sports economics of the developed world suggest that more than 70 per cent of the most popular television programs are ‘Sporting Events’.

As a nation, since we are a bit young at these league-format-sports on television it is difficult for us to appreciate the substantial contribution of events like IPL towards employment and value creation. Industries like media & entertainment, sports equipment, health and fitness, hospitality and tourism (to name a few) are the big beneficiaries from these sporting events.

In 2013, the CII and KPMG estimated the sports equipment market in India at ₹4,000 crore. Sport and related businesses are considered to be one of the few where the distribution and percolation of money is substantially more than many others.

Change mindset

The idea here is to not undermine any other industry but to help change our mindset about sports and media. A nation which is troubled by disguised unemployment and low productivity, especially of our agriculture sector, should wilfully and strategically encourage sports and sports-related businesses in the best interest of the country. Only if it is proven to be a good business can it absorb a sizeable workforce gifted with enough brawn to make a successful career instead of over-crowding the well-beaten academic route.

Acceptance and respect for sporting events like IPL will not only help many such unleash their potential and utilise their natural talent in a better way but also invariably improve the well-being quotient of our nation by a few notches.

Having said that, optimising water supply for IPL is still acceptable, if equivalent measures for optimising water supply are applied to all other industries deemed as ‘non-essential’ from water-criticality point of view. And if there are no such defined ‘non-essential’ industries (based on water consumption at water-critical times) then it’s high time we do so.

Understanding and appreciating sports as an equally respectable and value-generating industry is the need of the hour. A knee-jerk reaction based on some PIL filed against this particular business or industry is definitely not the right way of handling critical matters of the state.

The writer is pursuing his PhD in economics from the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics

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