About: the world this week, 18 February 2024 to 24 February 2024; Israel in Rafah; Gone Alexei Navalny; Pakistan Government combine; Sandeshkhali; Indian Cricket – Ashwin and Jaiswal; Indian Women’s Badminton -Anmol.

Everywhere

Israel is preparing to mount a ground invasion of Rafah – the last place of relative safety – in Southern Gaza. It hopes to significantly damage Hamas’ remaining capabilities by continuing its full-scale military operations in the Gaza Strip, and making it safe for start of the ground operation. And rescue of 130 hostages.

Meanwhile, there are unconfirmed reports that, as a contingency move, Egypt is preparing, an area at the Gaza border, which could accommodate Palestinians in case an Israeli offensive into Rafah prompts an exodus across the frontier.

Israel has served an ultimatum to Hamas to release all hostages before the holy Muslim month of Ramadan to avert an attack on Rafah. That’s about five weeks away.

This week, the United Nations (UN) Security Council failed to adopt a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in the Middle East. The United States vetoed calls for an immediate ceasefire. Amid intense fighting, the UN says, people in Gaza face starvation, disease, and death as the humanitarian situation nears total collapse.

The situation is grim but then, all that is required is for Hamas to release all the hostages – held since 7 October 2023 – which should bring the war to an end.

On the other war, this week marks the second year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Two years have passed since Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The military stalemate between the countries appears to be continuing without any end in sight. And the mind-boggling, unimaginable hardship of people of Ukraine continues.

Late last week, in Russia, Alexei Navalny, 47, former lawyer and President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable domestic opponent, fell unconscious and died after a walk at the ‘Polar Wolf’ Arctic Penal Colony where he was serving a 19 year prison sentence. The icy ICK-3 Prison in the Siberian region of Yamal-Nenets, 2000 kilometres from Moscow is where Navalny spent the last few weeks of his life.

The death of Navalny robs the Russian opposition of its most prominent leader as Putin prepares for an election, which would keep him in power until at least the year 2030.

Last year, a Russian court convicted Alexei Navalny on charges of extremism, handing him a sentence of 19 years in prison. Navalny was at that time already serving a 9 year jail term, on varieties of charges, that he says were politically motivated. The extremism charges are related to the activities of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. It was his fifth criminal conviction and his third and longest prison term – all of which his supporters say are a deliberate Russian strategy to silence Navalny.

Alexi Navalny rose to prominence as a fierce critic of President Putin more than a decade ago. He documented and publicly spoke about what he said was the vast corruption and opulence among the ‘crooks and thieves’ running Russia. He skilfully combined the use of social media with traditional campaigning, political organising and personal charisma to build a network of offices, and a political media machine. Subsequently, his movement was outlawed, members arrested, and most of his team now lives, in exile, in Europe.

Navalny earned admiration from Russia’s Opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent. Navalny said he was poisoned in Siberia in August 2020, which Russia denies. Navalny was also physically attacked at least two times: a suspected poisoning attempt when he was in jail in 2019, and an assault in 2017 in which a green liquid was thrown in his face that nearly blinded him. Despite the harsh prison conditions he maintained a presence online and his team continued to publish investigations into Russia’s corrupt elite, from exile.

In Moscow, at a memorial to the victims of Russia’s political repression in the shadow of the former KGB headquarters, some people laid roses and carnations.

One note read: “Alexei Navalny – we remember you.”

People were warned not to take part in any mass meetings in Moscow. Supporters arranged meetings to honour Navalny in London, Paris, Oslo, Rome, Brussels, Berlin, Geneva, Prague, Yerevan, Tbilisi, and Vilnius.

Navalny is married to Yulia Abrosimova, and had two children, daughter Darya and son Zakhar. His last word to his wife Yulia on Valentine’s Day was, “Baby, you and I have everything, just like in the song: cities, airfield lights, blue snowstorms and thousands of kilometres between us. But I feel that you are near me every second, and I love you more and more”- A popular Soviet-era tune.

Yulia has vowed to carry-on the fight against Putin’s Russia. “In killing Alexei, Putin has killed half of me. Half of my heart and half of my soul. But there is another half of me, and it tells me that I have no right to give in. I will continue Alexei Navalny’s work, I will continue the struggle for our country,” she said.

After weeks of wrangling, Pakistan’s two dynastic parties, the army-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), have reached a power-sharing agreement. Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of former Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif, will be Prime Minister – he carries on with the job – and Asif Ali Zardari – he returns to the job, he once held – the husband of assassinated former PM Benazir Bhutto will be President. All this, while another former PM Imran Khan cools his heels in jail, and whose Party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-insaf (PTI) backed independents won the majority of seats but were unable to cobble together a Government.

If elections in Pakistan are a step forward, what transpires during the elections and after the results are declared, is often many steps backward. With the same kind of people getting together in various permutations and combinations, Pakistan does not seem to be moving in the right direction at all.

Over the past week, the word Sandeshkhali was on the lips of most of India. Sandeshkhali is a village in the Sundarbans, North 24 Parganas District of West Bengal State. Why is it in the news?

Sandeshkhali has been on the edge and ‘boiling’ over allegations of harassment and sexual exploitation by local Trinamool Congress (TMC) Party – the ruling Party in West Bengal – leaders, especially a TMC leader called Shahjahan Sheik. He was seen to be wielding great power, popularity, and influence in the village, even more than the Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) or the Member of Parliament (MP), or even the Police, of the area.

The ‘can of worms’ began emerging last month, when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) reached Shahjahan’s residence to interrogate him in connection with a probe into a Ration scam. A mob that had gathered at the place thrashed and chased away the ED Officials following which Shahjahan absconded – going into hiding. Using the ‘breakthrough opportunity’ villagers, especially women, of Sandeshkhali have found courage to speak out against the many horrific crimes of Shahjahan and his aides — Shibu Hazra and Uttam Sardar. The allegations are that women were sexually assaulted in Sandeshkhali, often at gun point, and his men had usurped their lands to set up prawn farms. And that tribal people were forcibly made to transfer their lands, by the TMC leader.

Women came out in the streets, in large numbers, saying, “In Sandeshkhali, TMC workers have been raping women for months now – Sheikh Shahjahan, Shibu Hajra, and Uttam Sardar are raping them. We had come to the Police peacefully with the demand to arrest them. If they do not arrest them in Sandeshkhali, how will the women in Sandeshkhali gain confidence?”

Shahjahan, also known as Bhai, has had an incredible journey. He started off in the year 1999 as a trekker driver, who doubled as a conductor at times, and also worked as a vegetable vendor at the local market. Not much is known of his family or his education. It was thanks to his uncle, Moslem Sheikh, a local Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader, that Shahjahan got a break in politics, getting himself elected as a Panchayat Pradhan. After Sheikh gave Shahjahan his first breakthrough, he started looking after the local fish trade.

Later in 2013 he switched his political affiliation, aligning with the ruling TMC. And built his own faction within the party, in which role he carried various tasks in the party hierarchy including, ‘doing all that is required’ to win elections.

As the years passed by Shahjahan accumulated wealth of untold proportions, such as three palatial houses. Allegations of land grabbing; collecting a cut from every fish trader in the area; forcing villagers to give up their wages and welfare payments; running an illegal cross-border trade, and the kind, are doing the rounds. Shahjahan’s rise to the top saw him embroiled in criminal cases with the police having registered several cases against him – from extortion to assault to even murder. In 2020, he was accused of double-murder of two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.

The National Commission for Women (NCW), whose team visited the area, in a damning report, has highlighted widespread fear and systematic abuse in Sandeshkhali, implicating both police officers and the TMC.

Late last week, India’s cricket off-spinner Ashwin Ravichandran became only the second Indian bowler, after another Indian spinner, Anil Kumble (619 wickets) to take 500 Test wickets. This, when he got rid of England’s opening batsman, Zak Crawley, on the 2nd day of the third India-England Test Match at Rajkot, India.

In the 500 wicket league, Ashwin is the 9th bowler and 2nd fastest (98 Tests) to reach the milestone, behind Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan who did it in 87 Tests. Ashwin is also the third all-rounder and first Indian with 500 test wickets & 3,000 runs ‘under his cricket cap’.

In the game of cricket, records keep tumbling every time a match is played – at every turn of the ball and heave of the bat!

Then came along another star. This time in batting, in the same Rajkot Test.

Newcomer, 22 year old Yashasvi Jaiswal made an unbeaten, scintillating 214 runs (off 236 balls) along with Safaraz Khan’s unbeaten 68, in a 172-run fifth wicket partnership to take India to 430 for 4 wickets-declared. Chasing an improbable target of 557 England collapsed to 122 – All Out on day 4, due to a fiery spell of bowling by Ravindra Jadeja who took 5 wickets giving away only 41 runs. India leads the 5 match series, 2-1. Now some statistics.

Yashasvi Jaiswal became the first player to smash 22 sixes in a cricket test series – a hat-rick of sixes too. He becomes the first Indian to hit maximum sixes in a test innings and to get to his 3rd 150 runs in just seven Test Matches. He is the third youngest player to score two Test double-centuries behind Vinod Kambli and the great Don Bradman. He is the first Indian batsman (and third overall ) to convert his first 3 tons into 150 plus scores. He is the third Indian after Kambli and Virat Kholi to hit 200s in two successive tests…that’s a breathtaking list of records, already!

Jaiswal’s success story is amazing and truly inspirational.

The son of a small shop-keeper in Suriyawan, Bhadohi Village, Uttar Pradesh State, Yashasvi Jaiswal moved to Mumbai at the age of 10, on the advice of his seniors who detected his cricket talent. Jaiswal’s uncle put him up in a Dairy shop where he worked in the morning and was also allowed to stay. Unable to work in the evening, after cricket practice, the Owner kicked him out. Jaiswal then found shelter in Azad Maidan – a sports ground formerly known as Bombay Gymkhana Maidan, which has about 22 cricket pitches – in a Muslim United Sport Club Tent. Here it was a tremendous struggle, without bathroom facilities or electricity, and being forced to cook for others in the Tent. He used to sell pani puri outside Azad Maidan to earn money at night besides playing matches at the club. His life changed when Jwala Singh, a well-known local coach in Mumbai, found him and took responsibility for providing him with shelter, coaching, and mentoring.

Jaiswal’s fortunes looked-up when he was selected for the Under-19 World Cup in 2020, which was a turning-point. He dominated the Under-19 World Cup, smashing five 50s and finishing as the highest run-getter. He translated his World Cup success into an Indian Premier League (IPL) bid of INR 2.40 Crore, then thrived with 625 runs in 14 matches for the Rajasthan Royals.

“In India, when growing up you work hard for everything… I have done that since my childhood. And I know how important every innings is and that’s why I really work hard in the practice sessions”. Great wisdom on young shoulders!

Meanwhile, in Malaysia, Indian Women scaled a historic peak by winning the Badminton Asia Team Championship (BATC) with a 3-2 victory against Thailand in the final in Shah Alam. India’s ace player P V Sindhi gave a winning start to the team, but the teams played-on to tie at 2-2. Then, 17 year old teen shuttler Anmol Kharb clinched the deciding match for India with a 21-14, 21-9 convincing win over World No. 45, Pornpicha Choeikeewong. Anmol was on her first international tour and ranked 472 in the world. She displayed the proverbial nerves of steel and played like a seasoned campaigner. The rest, they say, is history.

Anmol Kharb is the 2023 Indian National Badminton Champion – Women’s Singles. She hails from Faridabad in Haryana State and initially played for the Dayanand Public School, Faridabad, before shifting bases to Noida at the Sunrise Shuttlers Academy under coach Kusumm Singh, a former national-level peer of Olympic medallist Saina Nehwal and Ashwini Ponnappa.

India is in safe ‘young hands’ – working awfully hard all the time.

More heart-warming success stories coming-up in the weeks ahead. Leave your tent, work hard, play the game of your life, and stay with World Inthavaaram.