The Tale of Two Wooden Spoons

 

Mumbai recently won two wooden spoons. Cricket as they say is religion in India. There should not be any politics in religion though religion plays a great role in Politics. Definitely, there is politics in Cricket as we see politicians managing cricket matters. Cricketers have turned into politicians, and politics is prevalent in cricketing matters. There are ‘politics like’ camps within cricket. IPL introduced Bollywood influence in Cricket through franchise owners. Cricket is a big business so business houses entered cricket just as Bollywood is big business. Politicians and Businessmen go in cohorts historically. So you end up in Cocktail of Cricket which is a religion, Politics, Business, and Bollywood.  And there is eternal underworld nexus to all this cocktail. Mumbai is the capital of everything except Politics.   Delhi is the political capital. Ironically, a win by Mumbai Franchise versus Delhi Franchise ousted Delhi from playoffs in the 2022 IPL.  Mumbai team won a wooden spoon in IPL 2022.  

Things went wrong right at the auction. There was no valid strategy to retain the core which had won titles in past. For the most successful franchise, it was a management failure. Even within the retention the huge amounts spent on non-performing assets like Ishan, Pollard, and to an extent the captain really backfired. Joffra Archer was known to be unavailable for 22 but the plan was for the next seasons. It is still a gamble. Non-availability of SKY and Mills were additional disadvantages introduced midway. There was no support for Bumrah in the bowling. They should have retained Boult. There was no dreaded spinner in the lineup. Sams did well towards the end when there was no hope for qualification. They also did not support Davids after two failed outings. When he was reintroduced in playing eleven it was late. They found some good talent for the future in Tilak Varma, Brevis, Shokeen, and  Kartikeya. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong for Mumbai. The past glory and aura took a dent in 2022. It’s a very steep road ahead for 2023. Hope they do some good trading or talent scouting for uncapped players which rebuild the core for the future. That needs a transition plan for leadership by 2024. Unless that happens, the fear of consecutive wooden spoons looms large.    

 The state of Maharashtra with its capital of Mumbai was known for being a pioneer and leader in commerce, industry, entertainment, cricket, fashion, trading, and exports. Maharashtra is philosophically driven by saints right from Dynaneshwar, and Tukaram to the Warkari leaders of today. Maharashtra in past had a legacy of political and social leaders right from Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Chatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, Bajirao, and Madhavrao Peshwas, Ahilyabai Holkar, Rani Laxmibai,  Lokmanya Tilak, Veer Savarkar. Maharashtra is driven by thoughts of visionary thought leaders like Dr. B R Ambedkar, Mahatma Phule, Shahu Maharaj, and Agarkar. On the social front, we have a legacy of the likes of Dr. Baba Amte, Dr. Prakash Amte, Dr. Bung, and Sindhutai Sapkal. We still have generations growing up on the literary genius of Acharya Atre, Pu La Deshpande, Vinda Karandikar, V V Shirwadkar, G A Kulkarni, V P Kale,  and many more in this list. We had musical geniuses like Pt Bhimsen Joshi, Lata Mangeshkar, and Asha Bhosale just to name a very few. In fact, the entire business, media, films, music, and creativity reside in Mumbai. Marathi theatre had many luminaries and drama has impacted thought propagation and solutions to social issues. We had great journalists and media personalities. Maharashtra cultural movement has bases right from main cities till remotest villages and recently it has spilled over in foreign lands like US, UK, Europe, Australia, Middle East, Southeast, and Far East Asia through well spread NRI population.   

But these are past glories. The level of the current political slugfest in Maharashtra politics has handed another wooden spoon to the state along with IPL 2022 wooden spoon.  The kind of personal vendetta, caste-based equations/slurs, and polarizations have really damaged the basic culture of the state which at one stage was the most civilized state in India. The language used by party functionaries, the accusations, threats, unconstitutional language used, violence and mobocracy have dented the image of Maharashtra.  . There is a chronology to the things that went south. First is the betrayal of the electoral mandate.  Votes garnered through the pre-poll alliance led to comfortable numbers for that alliance. The verdict of people in a democracy is the basic foundation of a party/ies forming a government. This verdict was violated by politicians to betray the trust of voters. Then we saw the notorious morning swearing-in ceremony and proposed an unholy alliance to counter the wrong done in the first place. Then we saw this alliance breaking due to some unknown pressure. The parties which had no common ground concurred only for obvious reasons. There was no apparent thought process. Then there was the notorious chain of events that rocked the state. There was an alleged involvement of corrupt police officers to collect revenues from businesses and hand them over to the politicians. There were scandals involving celebrities, film stars, their kids, and drugs. Many ministers were accused of crimes like corruption, and terror links. The ruling dispensation lacked an agenda. During Covid, Maharashtra registered maximum cases, the highest number of deaths, and the highest number of infections. There were accusations of corruption in the covid relief center's funds. The only policy was to blame the center. Opposition in the state was also involved in some strange non-issues being highlighted in the narrative. The noises on both sides have added to the cacophony. The media has stooped to new lows. There were cases where people were arrested for their criticism or even abducted and physically harmed by ministers and politicians. I think it’s the time for leaders across the parties to draw some basics and revive the culture and civil behavior across the board. Otherwise, the wooden spoon looms for the next few years.  

 

 

Second Year Syndrome

 

It’s finally summertime in this part of the world. Last weekend, I was at a beach town in Cape Cod Massachusetts.  Many Tourists were hanging out in numbers on Main Street’s famous bakeries. There were leisurely walks on the beach, there was a live music band on Saturday afternoon followed by dining out at a popular joint eating codfish and chips and watching Boston Celtics match along with ardent fans. The atmosphere was close to the one we experienced in the summer of 2019. This summer promises to be different from the last two summers.  

 

In the spring of 2020, the Virus from Wuhan created a disruption that impacted all walks of life including the tourism-based economy and lifestyle at many popular tourist destinations all across the world.  Countries closed their borders. Countries imposed lockdowns. Mask mandates were compulsory. Jobs were lost and Governments infused funds into the economies.  The whole ‘work from home’ culture emerged and it will occupy the landscape for a long time. There were many socio-economic fallouts. Globalization was threatened. Real estate markets changed. Virus impacted urban and rural areas differently. There was a disparity in the fallouts.  

 

But this summer promises normalcy in life which we missed for the last two years. But then again we face something like a Medical student’s second-year syndrome. This is a condition frequently reported in medical students, who perceive themselves to be experiencing the symptoms of a disease that they are studying. We collectively have studied so many things about the pandemic that our mindset doesn’t allow us to come out of the pandemic. It’s not just the mindset even the medical experts and collective wisdom now treat the current situation as far removed from the normalcy of pre-Covid days. Summer of 2019 seems miles away.  Remember the General Elections and Semifinal loss in the ICC WC Semifinal?  

 

The past two pandemic summers saw a spike in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and death, but even the experts predict that this season may be different. Though health experts expect cases to rise, they said the wave won't be as devastating as the previous two summers or the surge of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.  

 

Unlike the previous summers, major parts of the population have some immunity against the coronavirus from vaccines, boosters, and previous infections. People have access to antivirals that can prevent hospitalizations in the unvaccinated. However, immunity wanes and new variants could evade what protection remains.  Coronavirus trends in the spring give experts clues about what to expect this summer. Cases plummeted after the omicron surge in the winter, then plateaued and began to rise again in the spring as a generic trend. Though the unpredictable coronavirus makes it difficult to pinpoint what the summer will look like, experts have a few theories.  Experts say: The worst-case scenario is the emergence of a potent variant that isn't dulled by vaccines and previous infections, causing a large wave of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. 

 

A full surge over the summer is going to be really dependent on a variant fully emerging. That tends to be the biggest trigger that will send us into a surge. Those transmissible variants are good at finding pockets of unvaccinated people, and those people are more at risk of hospitalization and death. Remember last summer we saw the Delta variant creating havoc worldwide.  The best-case scenario is a sustained level of low transmission and no new variants. Few experts also expect the situation this summer to land in the middle: a small wave throughout the country with a slight uptick in hospitalizations and deaths. Areas likely to be most affected by this swell are ones not heavily affected by the omicron variant where people haven't mounted immunity protection.  Barring a devastating variant, most health experts agree, we may finally be out of the acute pandemic phase.  It's still far from an endemic phase, when COVID-19 would become like the seasonal flu, bringing a week or two of misery but a low risk of severe disease or death.  

 

 For COVID-19 to be considered endemic, scientists must determine manageable level of transmission. That hasn't happened yet.  A virus also can be considered endemic when it follows a predictable spreading pattern. For example, health officials can predict each year when the flu season will start and end, what strains may appear and how many cases may occur whereas SARS-CoV-2 hasn't shown a discernible seasonable pattern. Experts say: An endemic virus doesn’t disrupt people’s lives and that’s not the case with COVID-19. When people test positive for the coronavirus, they have to isolate themselves from family members, quarantine, wear a mask and avoid travel. Sometimes a person is pulled out of school or works from home and must notify close contacts. Although the virus hasn't entered an endemic phase, health experts hope we are on our way. The first step is to prevent severe illness, so a surge in cases doesn't lead to more hospitalizations and deaths through vaccines and practicing mitigation measures to keep vulnerable ones safe.  The best way to do this is to stay up to date with their vaccines and practice mitigation measures to keep vulnerable loved ones safe. We also expect countries to have clarity in policies and remove hurdles like unclear travel requirements and so on.  We really look forward to getting back to the normalcy of the summer of 2019.  

 

Two years of pandemic trauma have taught us many things and reinforced some we already knew. The next pandemic won’t be a surprise at least to infectious disease experts. We have seen multiple outbreaks of newly emerging diseases over the past 50 years including several other coronaviruses. We need to think smart and move fast. As one of the Stanford professors says that the idea that the virus will fade away is forgetting that there are going to be major bumps in the road and those bumps could be painful. Two years is not long enough to know how this story ends.    

  

 

 

 

Left out of the Human Rights

 

There were days when newspapers and TV news studios provided food for thought for those inclined to remain aware of issues and form opinions based on impartial news and astute balanced analysis of current issues affecting us socially, politically, and economically, and form views that would lead to our overall safety and wellbeing. But now a day’s popular mainstream media has taken sides and they try to sell their opinion using various innovative techniques. Sensationalism is used to sell pre-established agendas. The same trend is shared by social media and influences and trollers replace the popular anchors to create a cacophony. Amidst this there exist few social media forums which resort to a healthy discussion of points of view. Some Whatsapp Groups have provoked thoughts in the recent past. In one such group, there was a discussion that required people to enlist leaders in history who have been real champions of Human Rights.    

In general Human Rights relatively are a modern concept. Last 100 years or so we have seen important landmarks that have created a narrative. Widespread women's suffrage, the end of segregation in the United States, and regulations on working conditions are a few milestones that today's society can credit to the last 100 years. In the early 1900s, change was brewing amidst the violence and devastation of World War I and World War II. In the wake of the Holocaust, the creation of the United Nations in 1945, cast a new lens on the idea of universal human rights for every individual. According to the UN, these rights were inherent to all human beings, including "the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more," and they are still a cornerstone of foreign policy and human rights law. Gay Rights, End of segregation, end of apartheid, Same-sex marriage, Roe vs Wade, and many such events happened in the last 100 years or so.  It's worth noting that there is still a long way to go in ensuring human rights for everyone. A major region in this world still leaves in medieval times based on oppressive human rights ruling system based on religion. A major continent is struggling due to economic deprivation and local fights based on religion and corrupt dictators. Another continent fights against the crime. Two large countries have adopted communism and have their own dubious human rights records. Refugee problems and religious extremism plague prosperous countries. Democracies remain polarized based on left-right narratives. We need a lot of champions in the current era to really help all human beings across the planet to have equal rights in the real sense apart from just being a theoretical principle.  

Human Rights have a subjective interpretation. There is a popular liberal version of it and there are relative nuances as well. Based on those politically correct liberal standards the list of Human Rights champions will have predictable names filled mostly with the modern names.  Maybe there will be mention of some ancient philosophers and medieval political leaders convenient to the liberal narrative. Ancient civilizations were thriving and flourishing.  Yet some people in those civilizations were persecuted. Some civilizations ended while some changed their rulers and dynasties. Since the start of the last millennium, plunderers, explorers, and the colonists invaded new worlds.  They have decimated the local population.  The renaissance and industrial revolution equipped expansionists with capabilities that were crucial in these invasions and plunder. But the emphasis on knowledge and awakening rightfully also created a byproduct: Modern Human Rights Movement. But there is stark hypocrisy in recent times. On one hand, past colonists and invaders remained unapologetic about past atrocities while on the other hand, they do lip service to this modern concept of Human Rights.  The Current liberal narrative hypocritically takes a moral high ground against those who have been wronged in past and are now being assertive of their own Human Rights they champion.    

But apart from this popular narrative, few real champions of Human Rights are the ones who fought against the tyranny of invaders and colonists. These champions were fighting against these horrific criminals blinded by Religion, Political expansionism, or economic greed. These champions may have taken a few steps that might have not been acceptable to the conventional liberal narrative. But the very fact that they stood up against the tyranny of persecutors and the way they liberated those oppressed will solicit their name in the hall of fame. A prime example is Chattrapati Shivaji. He liberated the masses against the persecution of foreign invaders and religious extremists. The entire continent's History was changed which impacted the modern course of events in the History of the subcontinent. These days politicians with narrow caste-based agendas have tried to hijack the monumental impact of Chattrapati Shivaji’s Legacy. These Politicians really have divided society as they have intended. This is deplorable. In that line, many revolutionaries and reactionaries who sacrificed everything they had for a cause to free their countries against past colonists will not find names in the Human Rights hall of fame just because of hard-lined assertions they might have made against the contrary liberal narrative.  So we may have an incomplete list. 

Someone in this debate mentioned with a resigned outlook: “Human right is an unrealizable ideal. Humans will always be tribal and always have suspicion, dislike, and hatred of the other, the degree depending on the extent of insecurity felt and tapped by manipulative leaders. This has given birth to ungrounded idealism. It is better to embrace the human reality and prepare to live in an unfair world than to hope there is such a thing as universal law or rights or brotherhood”. Thus any attempt to have an all-inclusive and acceptable Human Rights Hall of Fame is unrealistic. Even though, one needs to be realistic and not utopian, a very small step towards utopia is to accept contrary viewpoints and be inclusive in the thought process.   

  

 

 

When Life gives you Lemons

 

The English Language has an idiom: To buy a lemon. It means to purchase something that is worthless, broken, unsatisfactory, not of its purported value, or disappointing. But these days cost of Lemons in India exactly contradicts this. These days Lemons cost a fortune. There are few quotes that ask you to act in a certain way if Life gives you a Lemon. For example, when life gives you lemons make lemonade. Or when life gives you lemons, you exchange them at the store for something more edible. When life gives you lemons, chunk it right back. When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye. These days if life gives you lemons you are rich, thanks to Inflation.   

Inflation really hurts everyone. Here in the US, despite some good numbers on employment in terms of economic recovery, Americans still say that the economy is sliding down and that financial conditions are getting worse. US Commerce Department also reported that prices increased 6.6 percent year-over-year in March, the sharpest rise in 40 years, with food costs up more than 9 percent and energy costs up a whopping 34 percent. Wages, though growing at their fastest pace in decades, are not keeping up with the price increases for many Americans. Though many economists claim that the economy now really is not as bad as it was in, say, 2008, when the financial system was in recession and millions of homeowners were underwater on their mortgages.  Even then the economy feels so bad to so many. The direction of the economy feels uncertain. The Federal Reserve is attempting to tamp down on inflation without triggering a recession.  

The economy feels so bad because it feels so bad for so many people. Downturns tend to cause concentrated economic pain for a few, leaving many others unaffected. During the Great Recession and the COVID recession, there was rising unemployment. But most Americans did not lose their jobs, and wealthy Americans were unlikely to be unemployed. Everyone experienced the fear of living through an economic crisis, with many people suffering from reduced employment opportunities, lower wage growth, and so on. But the pain was uneven.  

In contrast, nobody escapes inflation, even if rising prices affect some people far more than others. That includes people on a fixed income. It also includes lower-income families, who have less room in their budgets to absorb higher prices. They have to cut costs by switching from nice goods to bargain-basement ones. Indeed, the lower part of the income spectrum has been experiencing higher rates of inflation than the upper part. Today’s inflation comes on top of an affordability crisis. The price of housing is sapping budgets and forcing families to make harsh decisions to keep down costs: living far away from family, commuting long distances, giving up on having a third kid, renting forever instead of ever trying to buy. The costs of child care, elder care, higher education, and medical care remain outrageous as well—affecting families far up the income scale as well while those at the bottom are the most burdened. But it is also pushing up gas prices and grocery bills when rent was too expensive, to begin with, and child care was priced like a luxury good already, and as US Government is worried about triggering a new downturn. No wonder everyone is upset about the state of the economy.  

Back in India where life is hurt by Lemons,  Geopolitical tensions, heat wave impacting food prices, especially wheat, along with an overall increase in transportation costs due to fuel price hikes have added to the surge in the inflation rate, which had risen to a  high of 6.95 percent in March. Despite prices of several key items like some vegetables and pulses moderating, this was likely offset by further rises in the prices of cereals, meat, and fruits in April. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the sequential increases are likely being driven by edible oil prices, which continued to trend higher in April, and are set to rise further in May given Indonesia’s recent ban on edible oil exports. At the same time, both cooking gas and kerosene prices increased sharply in April. Revisions in electricity tariffs also likely pushed up power costs in some states. For the whole financial year, economists expect the inflation rate to be higher than 6 %, which is over the upper band of the medium-term inflation target of the RBI. The RBI further hiked the repo rate by 40 basis points amid worries over domestic food prices given their sensitivity to India’s political economy. India’s economy is consumption-driven and experts say that food inflation is hitting people’s spending power. Though food grain productivity has been at a record high, the increasing fuel prices have dampened the supply chain due to high transportation costs. Russia and Ukraine are major global suppliers of wheat, sunflower oil, and fertilizers, and disruptions to these products have pushed up prices. In India, which sources most of its sunflower oil from Ukraine, the price of the commodity has doubled since the start of the war in February. Coming back to Lemons, due to the summer arriving earlier than expected, there is a high demand for lemons. However, the natural calamities across the country and the cyclone affecting the lemon crop in Gujarat have created a shortage in supply.   

Everyone is hurt even in India due to Inflation. In fact, Inflation is hurting every country on this planet. Experts in the UK predict that the inflation rate could hit more than 10%. Rising food and energy price inflation limits the space for the Peoples Bank of China to cut interest rates, despite the rapidly worsening economy. Life is giving Lemons to everyone and everywhere. There is no respite in the near future unless those at the helm especially those who have a say on actual and trade wars, and supply chains decide to ease out things and enable people to make Lemonade out of them.