VOX POPULI Issue No. : N 019

 

VOX POPULI  
by 
AAM ADMI 

Issue No. : N 019
Issue Date: 13th Feb 2023

Contents:

1. Chinese Balloons Floating Irresponsibly Over The Rest Of The World

2. Talking of Colonial Mindsets

3. The Aussie Mind Games 

       Chinese Balloons Floating Irresponsibly Over The Rest Of The World

The Chinese balloon floating free over sovereign nations underlines risks that are unknown. The first obvious risk is it is spying and attempting to map the nations over which it would have passed, in this case the US. With relations between the two countries none too good it was obvious that the US would not sit quietly and watch the balloon float by. That a Chinese balloon was overhead would lead to fears as to what it would contain. After the Covid pandemic there is less of trust with China who refused to take responsibility that the virus emerged from its wet markets in Wuhan and later caused havoc around the world. Thus with a Chinese balloon in the sky there would be fears that it could be spraying unknown things which could lead to disease and pestilence. The US therefore has every right to shoot it down. Even then the US was hesitant as to what could happen in the process of shooting it down whether it would let off another explosive, conventional or atomic, resulting in greater disaster and more pollution. If China were responsible they could have informed the countries in the likely path of the balloon about the object so that people would be aware and there would not be unnecessary scare. This China does not do and then takes objections after the US had shot down the balloon. This is not taking proper responsibility. The US are well within their rights to refuse China to give back the balloon debris since they took the trouble of shooting it down and the object was in US skies. There is another Chinese balloon that the US claim that they shot over Alaska with another one reported earlier as  floating in the skies over Latin America and we have to see what happens to that. As for India, we have to be told by the US that similar Chinese balloons were floating across India and only then will we look up at the skies! It is like those times when the Pakistani terrorists launched a drone attack on an army camp on Jammu and we did not shoot it down because these items were not part of the SOP!

                                           Talking of Colonial Mindsets

There was talk of a colonial mindset still persisting in the UK when the BBC documentary on Narendra Modi's involvement in the 2002 Gujarat riots  was aired, in trying to arrive at a rebuttal of the content shown. However, now we ourselves are showing the same colonial mindset in the context of the Hindenberg report that has come out on the Adani Group Cos. As a consequence of the report the Adani stock started going downhill at an alarming rate wiping out half the Group valuation in a matter of days. Now this was a report done by the 'whites' and why should we have bothered if the Adanis were doing things the right way and there was no wrongdoing. That the stocks fell show that we as Indians still take cognizance of what the foreigners say which goes to prove that we also carry the 'colonial mindset'. Otherwise why should we have bothered about the report. We would have brushed it off and carried on as if nothing had happened. Thus we have to remember that when we point fingers at others, there are four other fingers that still point back at us.

                                              The Aussie Mind Games 

On the cricket field, India needs to be wary of the mind games that the Australiam team and its management are playing. Appearing as if they are scared of India's spin attack led by Ravichandran Ashwin is only to lull India into thinking that they have the Australian team on the backfoot even before a single ball has been bowled. This is not true since the likes of Steve Smith, David Warner, Labuschagne, Khwaja and the free hitting Travis Head are all strong in the mind and are capable of taking the Indian bowlers including the spinners to the cleaners. However, they are not resting alone on mind games but making sure that their batting practice covers what they are likely to see in the Tests by getting a bowler who has a similar action like Ashwin to bowl at them in the nets. Thus the Indian cricket team should not take it easy in their preparations for the upcoming series otherwise they will see themselves lose badly.

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