WHEN THE SOVIET UNION WAS A FORCE TO RECKON

 

Relations between India and Russia are rooted in history, mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation.  This is a strategic partnership that has withstood the test of time, and it enjoys the support of the people of both countries. 

 

History 

Diplomatic relations between India and Russia began even before India achieved independence, on 13 April 1947.  In the period immediately following independence the goal for India was to attain economic self-sufficiency through investment in heavy industry.  The Soviet Union invested in several new enterprises in the areas of heavy machine-building, mining, energy production and steel plants.  During India’s second Five Year Plan, of the sixteen heavy industry projects set up, eight were initiated with the help of the Soviet Union.  This included the establishment of the world famous IIT Bombay. 

A watershed moment in relations between India and the Soviet Union was the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship in August 1971.  The Treaty was the manifestation of shared goals of the two nations as well as a blueprint for the strengthening of regional and global peace and security. As I would tell you later this treaty turned out to be a game changer in the war for the liberation of Bangladesh!    

The nineties were a tumultuous period for both countries.  In 1990, India extended loans to the USSR in the form of technical credit and in 1991, India extended food credit and gift of 20,000 tonnes of rice.  After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, India and Russia entered into a new Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in January 1993 and a bilateral Military-Technical Cooperation agreement in 1994. This association still continues and our Prime Minister and their President meet once a year alternately in each other’s countries not only to reaffirm our world view but to remain committed as strategic partners in progress. The two sides also signed the ‘Strategic Vision for Strengthening Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy’ in 2014 and agreed on the ‘Partnership for Global Peace and Stability’ in 2016. 

 

The China factor

The China factor however is an undeniably difficult one in current Indo-Russian relations. While Russia is relying more and more on China economically and strategically after the Ukrainian crisis and annexation of Crimea and the western sanctions that followed, the Chinese military intrusions in our northern and eastern borders make them our No. 1 adversary today. From a pseudo-non-aligned India, which was clearly pro-Soviet, India today has a strategic civil nuclear deal with the U.S and with the latter and Japan and Australia forms a QUAD group designed against Chinese expansionist posturing. But way back in 1971 the situation was quite different.

 

A nugget from history

Mr. Vippin Nair is a historian who has extensively documented the course of events which led to the liberation of Bangladesh. During the ‘71 war USA tried to coerce China into attacking India to create multiple fronts as India was fighting Pakistan in both Eastern and Western sectors, but China didn’t oblige. What can be the reasons? U.S. President Nixon had an idea that India was wounded lion and it would be easy to take it out of the equation.

Whereas in reality the lion was just tired, US forces specifically the 7th fleet at that time was deployed in Gulf of Tolkien. Controlling the largest fleet, US wanted to swiftly move in to the Bay of Bengal and liberate the Pakistan forces from East Pakistan.

When the intelligence relayed the message that a large fleet is moving in, to India’s Eastern Fleet which was in command of Vice Admiral N Krishnan he said “Just give us the orders” but what he did not know was UK was moving in from the other direction to attack India at the Arabian Sea. The plan was to sandwich India from both direction and the beloved Chinese were in on this plan to attack from above.

A three way deadlock would have completely crushed India if the plan was successfully executed. The only thing President Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger forgot was India had a big brother at that time. India asked Soviet for help as per the Indo-Soviet security treaty. Soviet intelligence knew that UK’s Navy is led by its aircraft carrier Eagle.

To counter this two-pronged British-American threat, Russia dispatched a nuclear-armed flotilla from Vladivostok on December 13 under the overall command of Admiral Vladimir Kruglyakov, the Commander of the 10th Operative Battle Group (Pacific Fleet). Though the Russian fleet comprised a good number of nuclear-armed ships and atomic submarines, their missiles were of limited range (less than 300 km). Hence to effectively counter the British and American fleets the Russian commanders had to undertake the risk of encircling them to bring them within their target. This they did with military precision.

In an interview after his retirement, Admiral Kruglyakov, who commanded the Pacific Fleet from 1970 to 1975, recalled that Moscow ordered the Russian ships to prevent the Americans and British from getting closer to “Indian military objects”. The genial Kruglyakov added: “The Chief Commander’s order was that our submarines should surface when the Americans appear. It was done to demonstrate to them that we had nuclear submarines in the Indian Ocean. So when our subs surfaced, they recognised us. In the way of the American Navy stood the Soviet cruisers, destroyers and atomic submarines equipped with anti-ship missiles. We encircled them and trained our missiles at the Enterprise. We blocked them and did not allow them to close in on Karachi, Chittagong or Dhaka."

At this point, the Russians intercepted a communication from the commander of the British carrier battle group, Admiral Dimon Gordon, to the Seventh Fleet commander: “Sir, we are too late. There are the Russian atomic submarines here, and a big collection of battleships.” The British ships fled towards Madagascar while the larger US task force stopped before entering the Bay of Bengal.

The Russian manoeuvres clearly helped prevent a direct clash between India and the U.S-U.K combine. Newly declassified documents reveal that the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi went ahead with her plan to liberate Bangladesh despite inputs that the Americans had kept three battalions of Marines on standby to deter India, and that the American aircraft carrier USS Enterprise had orders to target the Indian Army, which had broken through the Pakistani Army’s defenses and was thundering down the highway to the gates of Lahore, West Pakistan’s second largest city.

According to note prepared by India's foreign ministry, "The bomber force aboard the Enterprise had the US President's authority to undertake bombing of the Indian Army's communications, if necessary."

Despite Kissinger’s goading and desperate Pakistani calls for help, the Chinese did nothing. US diplomatic documents reveal that Mrs. Indira Gandhi knew the Soviets had factored in the possibility of Chinese intervention. Referring to an Indian cabinet meeting held on December 10, “If the Chinese were to become directly involved in the conflict, Mrs. Gandhi said, the Chinese know that the Soviet Union would act in the Sinkiang region. Soviet air support may be made available to India at that time.” So naturally China couldn't do anything because USSR was sitting on top of it flexing its muscles daring China to make a move.

Have you ever wondered how much the world has changed geo-politically!

TOKYO 2020 - WHY DID WE STOP AT 7

 

 

 

The Olympic Games 2020 are now done and dusted and the Indian contingent gave its best performance till date and bagged 7 medals, 1 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze, but we are worth much more. A country of 1.37 billion people cannot be satisfied with these numbers. If one in every 6 person in the world is an Indian then why is our proportion of Olympic glory so anaemic?

 

There are several reasons for this, some which we can rectify and some which we can't. We cannot change our genetic composition and neither can we produce designer babies who will be the Olympic champions of tomorrow. But there are many things that we can do or have just started doing:

 

Malnutrition among children - Infancy and childhood are vital for physical and mental development of an individual and if this foundation is not laid we cannot expect to produce champions out of such children. Only healthy mothers produce and nurture healthy babies and only healthy children of today will become champions of tomorrow. So both maternal malnutrition and child malnutrition should be urgently addressed.

 

Less importance to physical fitness - Our children are either underweight or obese and the Physical Training (PT) classes in schools are considered as a waste of time by most parents. They fail to realize that only a healthy body can house a healthy brain and only when the two come together champions are produced, not only in sports but in all spheres of life.

 

Parental attitude towards sports - When we were children, for our parents sports was at best a healthy pastime. They could never imagine it to become our passion and our profession. The kids in India are not encouraged to go out and play, they are rather expected to sit at home and study. Television and mobile phones have further made them indoor creatures. Parents are keener on making engineers and doctors out of their children rather than sportsmen. The prevent idea till very recently was 

' Likhoge parhoge banoge nawab

  Kheloge koodoge banoge kharab'

I must say we have come a long way from there and unhesitatingly I will give credit for this to Cricket and BCCI. By giving a livelihood to so many people through IPL and other tournaments it has inspired many parents to think otherwise and support their children to pursue their dream in sports. Almost 10 years after the IPL, leagues for Kabbadi, Hockey, Boxing Badminton and Wrestling came into being and let’s hope these leagues can change the future of these respective sports as the budding local talents share locker rooms with talented world champions.

 

Finance - It is only the recent government which has shown some inclination towards financing sporting preparations, training, coaching and events. Still we in India spend only 3 paisa per day per capita on sports while China spends Rs. 6.10, which is 200 times what we invest! In 2018, the global sports market was valued at approximately 471 billion U.S. dollars and the United States accounted for a 32.5 percent of its share. China represented 12.7 percent of market. No wonder these two nations were on the top of the Olympic medal tally.

 

Sponsorship: The industry in India is too myopic and can't see beyond Cricket and consequently the other sports struggle to get sponsors. This was not the case in the past. Organizations like Railways, Indian Oil, Indian Airlines etc had their hockey teams that used to sponsor a lot of other sportspersons.  The football league had teams from Bengal Nagpur Railway, J.C.T. Mills Phagwara, Sikh Regimental Centre Meerut and many more. Imaging the plight of the Bronze winning Men's hockey and 4th position holders Women's hockey teams; they had no sponsors and the farsighted Odisha state government had to sponsor them. Promoting and marketing a sport is very important for the sport to gain popularity in any country. Just like the BCCI sponsored IPL has changes the quality of Cricket and mental attitude of our cricketers other sports should arrange more national tournaments where international players should be invited to participate. The raw local talents will immensely benefit from these close interactions.

 

Assured future of comfort: Except top players who win medals, others live a life of neglect and penury. At times we have seen even medal winners in the same sorry state in their ripe old age. Facilities and recognition at tier 2 and 3 level is almost zero. Everyone knows that hardly few would succeed in winning medals. Then why take the risk? We need to popularize sports and take them to our small town and villages and find sponsors for them so that players and coaches can make a living out of sports. This will enable us to put more athletes in contention across many more sporting events and even if one athlete excels, he/she will have a Kapil Dev effect on his/her sport. Conversely when 21 years old Special Olympics double gold medalist Rajive Singh dies of disease and penury in Ludhiana how can this encourage would be sportspersons?

 

Infrastructure: World champions in any sports are nurtured from a very young age. They have to be exposed to great coaches and trainers, and given all the facilities required as they mature into champions. Sports is not only about sportspersons but there is an ecosystem behind them that has to be nurtured. Our physios will have to understand the requirements, the coaches will have to upgrade their knowledge and the private entrepreneurs will have to be incentivized to invest in the ecosystem.

We need nutrition experts, trainers, physical instructors, coaches, sports medicine experts, sports psychologists and an entire eco-system to discover new and budding talents, nurture them, fine tune their skills and produce champions. We need to update our coaching standards with the latest technology and have facilities for training of the coaches. Whatever the Sports Authority of India has is primitive by modern standards and only doting parents are there to look after our young sportspersons. The current government is trying to make a difference by the ‘Khelo India’ movement and ‘Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) but we have a long way to go.

 

Corruption: Excellence in sports can be achieved by a strictly meritocratic system, where the best are given the very best facilities so that they can become even better and eventually world champions. If corruption and nepotism creeps into this at any stage, from the grassroots level to the Olympic team selection we can never achieve desired results. Favoritism needs to be weeded out for selections at various levels. The Commonwealth Games scam showed us that money that should be spent on sporting facilities, were going into the pockets of corrupt individuals.

 

Basic cost of playing: Some sports are very expensive because of the required sporting equipment. Shooting, archery, winter sports etc. all need a large investment in order to take part in. In other countries, these facilities are provided free of cost or at a very low cost to the sportspersons, but this is not so in India. Thus, these sports are only accessible to the rich, and thus a large part of the potential talent pool cannot be tapped.

 

Basic cost of training: Many sports training academies are just run as businesses. Thus the training fee tends to be high, and everybody cannot avail or afford these services. Again, only the rich end up using these facilities, and a vast talent pool cannot be reached. Mike Tyson, ,Jesse Owens, Pele, Diego Maradona, Manny Pacquaio, Usain Bolt, Victor Cruz etc. are people who have came from humble background but their respective countries supported their talent and turned them into world champions.

 

Performance: Performance of the national team matters and people tend to follow those sports where our teams perform well. Cricket did not enjoy such popularity when we are world and Olympic champions in Hockey. We also qualified for Olympics in Football once. Now as the performance and delivery declined in these sports less audience and sponsors came to the events and lesser people took to playing these sports. The World Cup victory of Kapil Dev's 1983 team changed the fortune for Cricket in India and as subsequent successes followed Cricket never looked back!  After Tokyo 2020 we can expect a resurgence of hockey and more interest in athletics and golf. 

 

Role models: Since India won the World Cup under the captaincy of Kapil Dev all our sporting role models have been cricketers – Sachin, Saurav, Dravid, Kumble, Dhoni, Virat and so on. A rare Abhinav Bindra, Pulela Gopichand, Mary Kom, P.V. Sindhu or Leander Pace could inspire thousands to take up their sports but public memory is short and their success has to be duplicated by their successors and new age role models must appear on the scene. Sports need role models for promotion and most of the Olympic sports do not have Indian heros or heroines. Neeraj Chopra, Aditi Ashok and Rani Rampal will now be the new role models and hopefully they will inspire a new crop of youngsters to take up their sport.

 

Identifying the true possibilities of a medal - Whenever we think of an Olympic medal we think of field hockey where there are only two gold medals. Till very recently we were not participating in fencing which has 12 gold medals, canoeing which has 16, cycling which has 22 and judo which has 15. Even in badminton and tennis with 5 gold medals we have an anaemic representation.

 

Malignant patriarchy - Imagine in this day and age village elders wondering how their daughters could be seen running around in shorts and being trained by male coaches! They pass diktats against the family of the budding sportspersons and discourage them to the best of their ability.  Who are we as a nation? Are we Taliban who will decide the future of our daughters?

 

Fragmented psyche - This easily is the most unfortunate thing that keeps on resurfacing from time to time. While all members of our team bond together and play together for the glory of their sports and for the pride of our country, some sections of the sick population keep dividing them along geographical, linguistic and caste lines. Athletes from the North East are worst sufferers experiencing bullying, unwanted attention, sexual harassment, abuse, stalking and discrimination. Racist slurs like Chinki, Chinese are considered OK or worse still, just a joke. Hurling casteist slurs to parents and siblings of a dalit hockey player by village hooligans back home cannot go unpunished. 

 

Genetics: An average Kenyan or Jamaican has a low BMI, so they can run for a longer periods. Running there has become a passport to fame and glory in a country full of poverty and neglect. Genetic factors underlie 30 to 80 percent of the differences among individuals in traits related to athletic performance. Skeletal muscles are made up of two types of muscle fibers: slow-twitch fibers and fast-twitch fibers. Slow-twitch muscle fibers contract slowly but can work for a long time without tiring; these fibers enable endurance activities like long-distance running. Fast-twitch muscle fibers contract quickly but tire rapidly; these fibers are good for sprinting and other activities that require power or strength. Other traits related to athleticism include the maximum amount of oxygen the body can deliver to its tissues (aerobic capacity), muscle mass, height, flexibility, coordination, intellectual ability, and personality. Many genes with diverse functions have been associated with athletic performance. Some are involved in the function of skeletal muscles, while others play roles in the production of energy for cells, communication between nerve cells, or other cellular processes. A combination of genes and environment shape the athletes.

 

It takes substantial time and effort to develop a world-class athlete. Therefore, it is not a good strategy that such players only become the star of one or two events. One of the myths in India is to focus mainly on finding talented players so that they can get more medals. However, relatively less focus has been given on developing consistent performing players. Talent and fitness are pre-requisite for performance but they alone cannot ensure desired success. Talent and fitness can give a sportsperson short-term success. He/she can become a star in one or two events. However, consistent performance is linked to mental aspect a player’s performance. Therefore an athlete, without taking care of her/his mental aspect cannot become a consistent performer. And only consistency at the highest level will create champions. We have made a good beginning but we have miles to go!

ANXIETY – LET US UNDERSTAND IT

 

If of late you are feeling nervous, anxious or on edge, not being able to stop or control worrying, trouble relaxing, feeling something awful might happen, you are not alone. Anxiety is core to our survival as it underpins our fight or flight response, helping us escapes danger, but when it causes prolonged fear, suffering or avoidance, it becomes a problem in people’s lives. Can we stand up to that force in our mind that is hijacking the amygdala in our brain, which is programmed to take us to fight or flight?

Performance anxiety is reflective of two different kinds of fear: Fear of failure – “of not being good enough” – and fear of being judged in a negative way. Even the top athletes and sportspersons have shown these signs and some of them did not bother to hide them from the world! By coming out in the open they have done yeomen service to millions of others who were hiding their state of mental health as if it was a stigma and were suffering in isolation.

Society perceives elite athletes as "superhuman beings" with unfathomable willpower, speed, strength, skills and abilities that mere mortals can only aspire to. Even the word Olympian with its roots in the Greek mythology, implies that these athletes are superhuman beings. However, in recent years, mental health disorders and mental health symptoms in elite athletes have been receiving increased attention.

Elite athletes are expected to be "focused', "resilient," "confident" and "composed." The assumption is also that only the mentally and emotionally strong athletes will succeed and be able to compete at the highest level. But the reality is that elite athletes are also vulnerable to and struggle with mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, addictions and substance misuse. Quite a few sportspersons, exponents of different sporting disciplines have gone public with their mental health issues, frankly admitting that it is affecting their performance in sports and worse still, their way of life.  Michael Phelps (Olympic swimmer), Marcus Trescothick, Ben Stokes, Glen Maxwell, Jonathan Trott, Sarah Taylor and Will Pucovski (international cricketers), Victoria Pendleton (Olympic cyclist), Johnny Wilkinson (international rugby player), to mention just a few have all taken a break from their sports to address their mental health issues. Add to this list now Simone Biles (Olympic Gymnastics) and Nayomi Osaka (International Tennis) who too have admitted that they need to sort out the demon in their minds before going on with their sports. Balancing the pressure to succeed does not come easy, many of the athletes have felt the need to prioritize their health while elevating conversations surrounding mental health to a whole new level.

 

The COVID stress

Many people are reporting moderate to severe mental distress during COVID restrictions. They have experienced high or very high levels of psychological distress in the previous year and a half. Anxiety had become a buzzword everywhere from workplaces to e-classrooms, Twitter to TikTok, and WhatsApp to Telegram. Though common people have their own understanding of this term, and often use it loosely to describe a feelings of being on edge, nervous, scared, fearful, worried or stressed, none of them are wrong. They are perhaps experiencing something very similar but expressing differently and are actually implying that they have ‘a fear of the unknown.’

In a time like this, it can be really difficult to remain optimistic and think positively about the future when we are surrounded by negativity and when our recent past has been quite depressing. But mental health experts recommend using a unique tool that can transform the way you look at your life – setting “intentions”. This is a much gentler way of dealing with anxities in times of crisis. Instead of setting hard and fast goals that are either achieved or broken, you will be setting extensive ideas with intentions that help you make changes in your life in a gentler, more compassionate way. The basic idea is that with intentions, instead of being focused on a specific outcome, your purpose will be more on the journey. It's a commitment to what you want the journey to be about as life itself is a journey and not a destination. As a result, you will be more inspired to take action, as opposed to pressuring yourself to do so and getting anxious thereby.

 

Good anxiety and bad anxiety.

You will be surprised to know that this anxiety in its benign form has a useful role to play in our life. It alerts us to the need for more resources: there’s something going on here, we need to attend to it, to solve the problem or find a way to avoid it.  It offers us this fight or flight instinct. Was Capt. Chesley Sullenberger not anxious before landing the U.S Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River on the fateful winter afternoon of January 15, 2009, thus saving the lives of 150 people on board? Are the cardiac surgeons not anxious every time their patient goes on bypass?

So anxiety is not always bad. Your brain is constantly creating predictions about your environment so it can stay a few milliseconds ahead that could make the difference in a high-threat situation. It is taking everything from past experiences and guessing what’s going to happen next and those guesses are important for our life saving decisions. When performing complex tasks under pressure, like writing an exam or landing a plane, or performing a life saving surgery you need to focus your attention on threats, and here some amount of anxiety improves your performance. This is normal anxiety.

However, if this is a constant day and night feeling overpowering our thought process it becomes extremely unpleasant with fearfulness, recurrent panic attacks and/or constant worry. Worry is an attempt to try and control things, get the measure of things and get some certainty and be prepared. It arises as a coping mechanism, allowing us to anticipate everything that could go wrong and to plan for any eventuality, which may feel like it is “inoculating” us from the worst. But unfortunately this ‘worry’ is a very inefficient problem-solving strategy. It feels as if it is helping, whilst at the same time triggering anxiety. Worry can start to become a burden in itself because it’s just miserable to be worried all the time. Then again, many people can “start worrying about being worried”, which can quickly turn into a kind of psychological loop.

Normal anxiety becomes abnormal when you find yourself anxious about not real stimuli but fictitious ones. You feel threat when there are actually none. Off course, the pandemic is not a figment of our imaginations.  But what has actually happened is that it has got some of us up and ready to solve a problem that’s really out of our hands. Their brain would prefer to have a bunch of resources in their hand to deal with the unknown source of scare, but they can’t because the adversary is unknown. That mix of unpredictability and not having the resources to cope is a perfect cocktail for the brain to churn out anxiety. These people become hyper-vigilant and are constantly looking for signs of danger.

 

Not just the mind

This hyper-vigilant status is causing excessive production of hormones such as adrenalin and the stress hormone cortisol. Their heart rate goes up. They breathe faster, and might even become dizzy or nauseous. They sweat, their muscles tense (and teeth clench, shoulders creep up to our ears, and so on). Some people mistake these changes as serious illness – in turn feeding their anxiety. The anxious brain can distort our ability to appraise things efficiently. Prolonged production of cortisol can cause health issues such as the propensity to gain weight, which carries an elevated risk of diabetes and depression. It can affect appetite, sleep and ability to concentrate and function properly in daily life.

So yes, anxiety is a real issue, but not all anxieties are bad. And when they are we should be open about our mental health issues, seek professional help, as our sports icons are openly doing, and kill the demon before it can do any further harm to us. Sportspersons like Ben Stokes, Simone Biles and Nayomi Osaka deserve our respect and admiration for talking openly and declaring to the world ‘It is OK not to be OK!’ Bravo!!