After the long weekend, I am back.
1 With second wave of Covid 19 at its top peak in certain states of India, and it seems Maharashtra is the worst affected state, and Mumbai has also been affected. Now a days number of cases in Maharashtra and Mumbai have crossed the earlier daily peak. And what does the govt do- imposed the night curfew.I do not understand the purpose behind night curfew, if they wanted to contain the epidemic than it should have been total lock down and only essential service working. Problem is govt is caught in 2 minds, one for lock down and other for continuing with the financial and economic activities. With partial lock down certain section of economic activities will suffer but as the maximum movement is during the day time, the chances of spread of epidemic is high during day. In my opinion Maharshtra will need total lockdown for atleast 3 to 4 weeks to contain the epidemic to certain level, any other stop gap arrangement is not going to give the desired results.
2 There is a news that NCP chief Sharad Pawar met Home Minister Amit Shah 2 days back and tremor starts in Maharashtra politics. As you all know presently Maharashtra is having a coalition govt of three major parties Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, and now if any of the party leaves the coalition the govt falls. The leaders were reportedly hosted by a common industrialist friend in Ahmedabad on Saturday night. The NCP chief’s trusted aid accompanied them. NCP spoke person was prompt in denying this meeting, but the BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, neither denied nor confirmed it, giving rise to speculations tht the two parties are up to something. Amit Shah’s comment that “ Everything need not be made public”, added the needed suspense around the meeting.
In an earlier incident when Amit Shah had met Uddhav Thackeray during the Maharashtra elections and where,as per Sena, he promised equal power including Chief Minister’s post that later led to their breakup. Despite repeated reminders and allegations of betrayal from Sena, Amit Shah neither confirmed nor denied the supposed promise. He only talked about this issue after one year, and denies that he had made any such promise. Now Amit Shah is following the same strategy with regard to dinner diplomacy with Pawar, allowing others to deny or confirm it.
In Maharashtra politics the situarion is such that the three partners of MVA are looking at each other with great suspicion and sre expected to have deepened trust deficit.
In this episode, Congress is totally sidelined and actually they do not have any say in this alliance govt and Sena is trying to put abrave face, with their spokeperson saying “ we do not see any threat to govt. It will rule full 5 year term. Political leaders cutting across parties do meet. there is no secret about such meetings. Sharad Pawar is national leader, he might have some issue of great public importance to discuss with Amit Shah, the Union Home Minister. What is wrong in it?”
Now everyone is aware about the NCP and how that party is unpredictable in nature, and if NCP joins hand with BJP to form govt in Maharashtra then nobody will be surprised.
3 This is concerning cricket- So India has beaten England in their home series in all the formats of the game. In Test they won 3-1, in T20 I they won 3-2 and in ODI India won 2-1. It was a great cicketing victory for India as they surpassed their opponent in all form of the game. In T20 and ODI series were very close and only the last match decided the outcome of the series. The fact the last ODI fame was very close affair and India emergen winner only in the last over of the match as England fell short by only 8 runs. As the end of 49th over match could have won by any team, but India’s bowling and fielding prevailed and India won the series.
One thing which stood out in this series was the bench strength of Indian team in all formats of the game. Now if in form player was injured the his replacement also performed very well, and it had become problem for the selectots whom to drop and whom to keep. The fact is that only 4 players Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Rishab Pant and to certain extent KL Rahul can take their place in the team confirmed, and rest of the players have to fight for their place in the team.
Ths is the only reason why Indian team is feared by all the cricketing playing nations.
Waiting for your views and comments
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
30th March 2021