Calm Dow(n)
The Indian Olympic Association has demanded that the Dow Jones Index should drop the 'Dow' from its name and henceforth call itself the Jones Index. When told that Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Chemical Company are two entirely different entities with no real connection they whittled down their demand to drop only the 'D' and rename itself The Ow Jones Index.
The above fake news is in response to the current darling topic of the news channels - 'Should India boycott the London Olympics?' Why? Because one of the sponsors of the London Games is the Dow Chemical Company, the current owner of the erstwhile Union Carbide, which was responsible for the Bhopal Gas leak, the biggest industrial tragedy that has ever happened in Indian history. Believe me, it was by far one of the biggest human tragedies that has EVER happened. And I would still want to behave logically.
So will a guy like Abhinav Bindra not participate at the London Olympics because an emotional appeal to a nation takes our focus away from what is sport? We have seen enough boycotts, we have seen enough hate.After talking to a guy like Bindra, one realises that people sacrifice enough to try and reach the pinnacle of their sport. And you can never take it away from them for some political reason.
The Dow Chemical Company still operates in India. If the Indian government were so particular about the Bhopal gas leak they would stop Dow from coming to India. If Dow can still legally operate in India AND make profits then what moral right does the govenrment have to go to the IOA? The morality of the Indian government protesting against a Dow at the Olympics is as good as a Ricky Ponting claiming a bump catch.
Was Dow ever really directly responsible for the Narasamhar? It wasn't. They took over a few years later from Union Carbide. It wasn't legally responsible for what Union Carbide had done.
You go to the Dow website and you can see that the Dow Chemical Company has sponsored the US cycling team for some 16 years and more and a lot of other Winter Olympics stuff for at least 20 years as well. So Dow has been a partner of the IOC for some 30 years. Did anybody raise a stink then? They didn't. So why blame Dow now?
I would join the chorus to stone a Dow sponsorship if it were that simple. It is NOT!! Down(n) with it!!!