From the Editor

Now that India has managed to outdo England in the cricket ODI series, all previous performances and misdemeanours on and off the field, by cricketers and administrators, will be forgotten. Reams and reams of purple prose will again sing praises and paeans.

Meanwhile, a fledgling league tournament in need of publicity and support around India’s national sport, which is among the most exciting games you can play, goes through its rounds practically unrecorded.

Can anyone explain this lopsided balance of gross disproportion? It is finally about building brands and propping them up, isn’t it? So who decides which brands to build and which not? And why? Whom do we target with these brands? Again, why?

Share your views by writing in to bloncampus@thehindu.co.in so we can have a debate.

Branding brings to mind the appropriation, or misappropriation, of national icons. In the 150{+t}{+h} anniversary of Vivekananda’s birth, what he showed by example is all but forgotten; only the projection of a saffron-clad militant-seeming sadhu seems to remain. Yet, fundamentally, he gave importance to the pre-eminence of all faiths; his famous Chicago address drew attention to his faith. More than that, though, he believed in service to the poor, and his gaze was unflinchingly on the masses, the deprived and the underprivileged. Something we seem to have forgotten.