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Crowd scenes from the streets of Bengaluru during the RCB victory celebrations. Image: Revsportz
Boria Majumdar
A lot of people reacted to my column from yesterday and asked what was the point of doing a celebration on this scale? Why should there be a victory parade in the first place? What’s the need? Why put lives in danger?
Victory parades are a reality around the world. Every major win is celebrated with one. Never has the parade been an issue. Rather, the issue was the under-preparedness. The issue was the lack of coordination and the lack of effective administrative implementation. Even Mumbai hosted a parade last July after India’s T20 World Cup win. And I am sure there will be more parades in future. Every Champions League win or a FIFA World Cup success is followed by a victory parade. Argentina’s celebrations in 2022 stand as a case in point. None of these ended in tragedy. That’s because the administration was well prepared and there was adequate synergy.
In Bengaluru, the issue was synergy. If the police wanted the event cancelled, clearly they were concerned. Why were the police overruled? Why did they have to change their stance? At whose behest? Was there political pressure?
Also Read Bengaluru’s Broken Dream: When Celebration Turns to Catastrophe
At around 3pm local time, someone close to RCB messaged saying the parade was cancelled, and all events would take place at the Chinnaswamy. As I was about to put out the news, I was told that the parade was back on. So it is clear that at some level, there was unease. Law enforcement was not sure of being able to pull this off. They needed more time to plan and execute it to perfection.
Someone somewhere changed all this. While some are blaming players for it, they are barking up the wrong tree. Players don’t have the agency to decide. The management and the political establishment do. If the political class had followed the suggestion of the police and not given permission, no player could have done anything about it.
Where the RCB management went wrong was in continuing with the celebrations even after the tragedy had occurred. Yes, it was a curtailed event, but it was a celebration nonetheless.
The moot point is that we shouldn’t attack the idea of a victory parade. Attack and question the way it was done. Question why it was done in such a manner and hold people accountable. If human lives turn into mere footnotes, it is a problem. A months from now, we shouldn’t be saying: ‘Oh, 11 people died in Bengaluru.’ These are human lives, for God’s sake. Someone’s son, brother, father or daughter. Families have been destroyed, and we must treat it with the sensitivity and the seriousness that it deserves.
We must ensure such things don’t ever get repeated in the future. We have to do better. To take potshots or use this tragedy to target people you don’t necessarily like is also playing politics at a certain level. I have seen that happen in a section of the media too. And that’s what is disappointing. Acutely so. Let’s not play politics over human lives. It is a national tragedy, and we must mourn and make sure it never happens again.
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[[{“value”:”Boria Majumdar A lot of people reacted to my column from yesterday and asked what was the point of doing a celebration on this scale? Why should there be a…
The post Victory parades are not the problem, poor planning is appeared first on Revsportz | Sports News Portal | Latest Sports Articles.”}]]
