Blue bleeding the tax-payers?

The euphoric last ball six will be MS Dhoni’s most beautiful return gift for all the adulation his countrymen and women have given him, sealing once and for all the cruel memory of Javed Miandad’s last-ball six off Chetan Sharma at Sharjah. My sister had snapped ties with me for 24 hours that Friday because I had predicted Miandad would hit big.
Back to World Cup 2011, 48 hours have lapsed, and the booze has lost its fizz, the media has finished interviewing anyone and everyone within the champions’ radar: friends, relatives, temple priests, astrologers, gardeners, maids and drivers. The news pages and channels have gone berserk with the celebration blitzkrieg, with champagne and rewards raining heavily on willing players’ heads. The moment the ecstatic men in blue touched the Cup, the BCCI promised a few more crores into the players’ kitty. What has followed is a tsunami of rewards by the not-to-be-left-behind governments (Centre and state) that is going to leave the middle class tax-payers devastated. And this is not a silly point, mind you.
The players are anyway on a fascinating financial wicket, with more bounce added to those gorgeous millions, apart from the ICC’s 13.8 crore prize money and the BCCI monetary gift to each of the champions. Fair enough! BCCI is a cricket board, after all.
Take a look at the unrestrictive, commercial power-play: just imagine the brand endorsements these players indulge in. No problems. They are celebrities and have earned this position. So apart from the cola they push (that has incidentally also taught them to change the gentleman’s game and go for the upar cuts and pallu-helicopter shots against opponents), these players are asking us to watch Sony television, use Karbon mobiles, wear reebok gear, apply male fairness cream, fill car tanks with Speed fuel and insure ourselves with Aviva, to name a few. This is taking care of adding more millions into their large piggy bank.
Now the “men and women in white” have stepped in to distribute the largesse in cash and kind. First, the Delhi government’s Sheila Dikshit offered cash rewards. Mamata Banerjee announced free railway passes to the champions. She had the time to make such announcements despite the elections in West Bengal. She anyway need not write fresh hate-Left speeches; even Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya knows it by heart. Bangalore’s Yeddyurappa government quickly announced plots of land for the players. Soon, other the state governments followed suit, and will follow suit with their cricket charity.
Why? Why is it that governments are joining this bandwagon when their respective states are in a shambles? Corruption has failed to become an election issue because it seems to have become an accepted or even an acceptable fact. Governance remains a fancy democratic term. Why are the men in white so unaffected by the country, infected by the dangerous bugs of illiteracy, inflation, unemployment and poverty? Why do our men in white choose to drive past hungry shanties in their white convoys? Why do our men in white want to use tax payers’ money to fill the over-flowing coffers of the men in blue?
So the ICC pays them, BCCI pays them, corporates pay them, sponsors pay them, bookies pays them (I couldn't resist this temptation). Then why are the tax payers being wrung out to carry coal to New Castle (to use a cliché)?