The Barclays Premier League evokes very passionate reactions from many youngsters of this agrarian country. The excitement provided by the footballers, their ill-perfected skill and their phony girlfriends reaches orgasmic levels at times. This devotion towards the game – especially towards some silly League in England – which is broadcasted at prime time on one of the better channels on Indian television is fast becoming a concern to the intellectual integrity of this nation.

On the day when the Prime-minister’s daughter was feted for her contribution towards science and its development in this country by none other than the Infosys Science foundation – the pioneers of slumdog outsourcing, many ill-advised youth were deeply engrossed in dissecting the bones out of Manchester United’s loss to Leeds united.

The photograph above has some illustrious personalities from(L-R)-

NR Narayan Murthy (Mr.Infosys), Amartya Sen (Nobel Laureate), Hamid Ansari (Vice-President of India), Upinder Singh (Award Recipient), Kris Gopalkrishnan (Cool Dude Infy CEO), Mohandas Pai (Infy HR Head). The most notable fact about all these great minds is that none of them have ever bothered discussing football in their lives – let alone incidents in some obscure league in England.

The complete apathy towards one of the “nearly” great fairytales of all time combined with the lack of willingness to bother about other league not shown on television at primetime is a huge matter for concern to Infosys and to the nation. The biggest outsourcing company is losing some of the best brains of the country not to football but to the Barclays Premier League.

Education is considered of prime importance in our country. Engineering doubly so. The employees of the Premier League are not exactly education enthusiasts. None of the characters who make a living out of the eyeballs that are glued to the television in India and China bother to go to Universities. Neither do they know Fourier Transforms, Binary Phase Shift Keying Techniques or Effects of Deforestation. Quite contrary, the Barclays Premier League is always on the look out for exploiting the educated and “unsettled” Indian viewer. A quote by Manchester City CEO Garry Cook brings out my point more clearly -

“China and India are gagging for football content to watch and we’re going to tell them that City is their content. We need a superstar to get through that door. Richard Dunne doesn’t roll off the tongue in Beijing. Ronaldinho brings access to major sponsors and financial reward.”

Only the noble outsourcing companies, can save this country from this growing malaise. Infosys need to market themselves better and make themselves more appealing to the masses. In order to rival the entertainment bouquet provided by football and BPL in particular, Infosys should start primetime shows educating the masses about Software Development Life Cycles, Acceptance Tests, Beta Tests, Clean Coding Convention and Practices. With a few desi items showing ample cleavage to keep the insatiable engineer interested, the programming would be a grand success.

If the situation worsens, Infosys will no longer find able engineers to perform data entry jobs for big clients like General Motors and British Airways. This situation has to be nipped in the bud. A mass awareness campaign should be initiated making the youth of this country aware that – India is primarily an agrarian nation. That they have an opportunity to sit in a cubicle and attend calls from US clients. It is a privilege that most youngsters who dont have a broadband connection to read this post dream about. To discuss about follies and shortcomings of uneducated, impassionate European and African chimps who earn more in one week than the Prime Minister of our country earns in one year is not sustainable in the long run and will have disastrous effects on Infosys and Indian economy on the whole. The faster this problem is sorted the better. Else Infosys will never ever earn the cult status that Intel or IBM enjoys. And it’s all due to Barclays Premier League.