Humpy vs Sania

I've been following Sania Mirza's modest success in tennis with some interest, she has certainly done country proud, specially when she won against Svetlana Kuznetsova in Dubai Open in march this year. At the same time, i'm perplexed at the publicity she receives, as it is not proportionate to her success and how media makes anything trivial about her as news (particularly in Deccan Chronicle, where a day doesn't go by without news item on her) and overstating her chances of success in a game. This makes me wonder, whether we don't know how to handle success which we achieve once in a while, so that we exaggerate things? or we don't have enough sports stars to write about or cheer for (other than cricketers)?. When i ask myself a basic question that why our people prefer tennis in the first place, as many of us give damn for our national sport kabadi! or for that matter any other sport (except cricket)?.

I think answers for these questions lies in the role of media and glamour of Sania in attracting masses to this game. Our yearning media has found someone, who is marketable with her glamour( also other factors) and who has modest success under her belt. Generally for a person to take interest in a new game, either the game should be appealing to him/her or they should have interest in someone, who participates in the game and for our people its the later case, since many people just follow only sania's games due to glamour and patriotism and doesn't have much interest in other tennis players or bother about news relating to the tennis world, for that matter most doesn't even know rules of the game. If one thinks that the glamour has nothing to do with her publicity & popularity, then they are wrong, we have many athletics and chess players who have achieved greater heights than sania in their respective sport, but there are in oblivion.

Media has created inflated image of her which will overshadow other deserving players as Koneru Humpy. Sania's world tennis ranking is 34 and Koneru Humpy is a women grand master with world ranking of 6 (in 2004 she was placed in 3rd place) and she has distinction of being first indian woman to achieve the Men's GM Title at age of 15 years, 1 Month, which in itself is a world record for Youngest-Ever Women to achieve the Men's GM Title. With so much talent she is starved of resources. Both the players are from the Andhra Pradesh state, Recently Humpy has made a appeal to the State government of Andhra Pradesh for their financial assistance, which she desperately needed to be trained for the world chess championships coming up early next year. But shockingly, state government has rejected her request and allocated 20 lakhs to Sania for her performance in the US Open and also decided to sponsor her visits abroad to participate in tournaments and her traveling coach John Farrington, where as already in last 3 months she had received total about 60 lakhs and housing plot from the state. Sania has corporate sponsor and earns lot of money through her endorsements and more over she has declared that she wouldn't be needing any financial support anymore. Let us suppose, if something of this kind is done to Sania would our media and public remain quite? perhaps no. People may view chess as a game where 2 persons push pieces of wood on 64 squares, this perspective could be changed, if our media promotes sports instead of individuals and stop exaggerating significance of reaching 4th round of a particular grand slam.

It is not the public who takes interest but it is the media who creates interest!.

Pakistani propaganda

Pakistan's former chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Nur Khan's disclosure of 1965 war, that the Pakistan was the aggressor and not India as it was made to believe in pakistan by the pakistan's Army and following governments, which till date view 1965 war as their victory and celebrate September 6 as "Defense Day". This isn't shocking as it is to many who i know, Thing is pakistan's government has misled their own people and some gullible people in India & the world with their strong propaganda on various issues as related to India in general, J&K and spewing venom on minorities(specifically against Hindus) in its school text books as noted by UN. To start with, they accuse India for not implementing UN security council resolution of 1948, fact of the matter is that the resolution has precondition, which requires pakistani tribesman & regulars to vacate the J&K and subsequently allowing Indian forces to reduce their strength in the valley thereby creating conducive environment to enable plebiscite under UN supervision, as pakistan couldn't fulfill its obligation, India couldn't permit plebiscite in just its J&K territory, instead of entire J&K State(including POK). Here is excerpt from the article in Dawn(pakistani daily) by Irfan Husain, though bit old but quite relevant in todays time. In my opinion it is worth reading entire article, it gives insight into pakistani psyche.

"So far, Pakistanis have been brainwashed into believing that it was India who did not permit a plebiscite in Kashmir. But in actual fact, the resolutions clearly called for the withdrawal of Pakistani troops from Azad Kashmir followed by the 'thinning' of Indian troops as pre-conditions for a plebiscite. In the event, since Pakistani troops remained in place, the other steps could not follow."

List of UN resolutions on J&K can be found at here.

Chinese influence and yahoo's duplicity

Few years ago, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) under the Department of Information Technology has requested cooperation from yahoo in blocking/deleting kynhun yahoogroup, which is "promoting anti-national news and contained material against Government of India & State Government of Meghalaya." and yahoo's reluctance made Department of Telecommunications at the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology to issue an order directing ISPs to block kynhun Yahoogroup(it is another story that most of ISPs messed up by blocking entire yahoogroups website for some days since they don't had technical know-how to block specific yahoogroup), now it was reported that Yahoo provided chinese investigating organizations with information that helped link journalist Shi Tao's personal e-mail account and the text of the message to his computer. As per BBC report, Shi Tao was found guilty of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal Communist Party message and sentenced to 10 years.

Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said

"Just like any other global company, Yahoo must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based"

It should be noted that earlier this month yahoo had invested $1 billion in china's firm Alibaba.com.

Importance of infrastructure

A good infrastructure is important for economic development of any country, specially in the case of India which is like island, as it is surrounded by water, himalayas and hostile nations, which doesn't allow transit of goods. For this purpose India should maintain strong navy to protect its maritime interests. New seaports should be built and existing seaports need to be modernized, so that they can handle more unloading/loading of cargo per hour. We should improve and lay new roads and rail links connecting entire country extensively, this would improve & promote trade & commerce and attracts FDIs. This would assist growth of various sectors and provides mobilization of army & better management of supplies to border areas, and also reduces reaction/deployment time, it should be noted that at the time of 1962 war, every small need of the army has to be airlifted to the frontlines and in some events air dropped food & other things had landed in the enemy territory and depriving our army from those essentials, where as Chinese has laid extensive roads and rail links for sending supplies and reinforcements. This is very important with regards to our north eastern states for having poor communication and transportation links with rest of India.

Golden quadrilateral project is a good step but still lot needs to be invested in development of basic infrastructure.

Who am i?

I came across this fun site and out of curiosity took leader and Classic movie test and below are the results. I was amazed at the second test result but i was not sure of first result, therefore thought of taking more comprehensive test with more questions(45 qns) and surprisingly result was same. but... perhaps my intellect is best served to destroy the world. lol!!!.

What Famous Leader am i?

What Classic Movie am i?