Adieu to Legendary Master Blaster “Sachin Tendulkar”

Ask him what he has lived for and the answer will be prompt, "To play for India". Somehow, when he says it, you know it's not just a platitude but a heartfelt truth.

I was 5 year old, when a 16- year old Sachin Tendulkar faced his first ball in test cricket from Pakistan Waqar Younis in Nov 1989, the Berlin wall was standing, Saddam and Osama where still US allies, oil was at $19 per barrel and the sensex was under 750 points, the Maruti 800 was a bold young challenger to the Ambassador and Fiat, the Internet and Mobile phones hadn’t come to India, and Doordarshan was the only TV Channel. A mountain of mind-boggling statistics later, he retires as arguably the greatest batsman and unarguably one of the finest Gentlemen to ever grace a cricket field.

The only batsman against whom Sachin can truly be bench marked is Sir Don Bradman. But Bradman never played with the pressure of carrying the hopes of a billion-plus people on his shoulders, never had to deal with a situation where a loss was similar to a criminal conviction with the world's second-most populous country sitting in collective judgment. Bradman played a sport. Tendulkar has presided deity of a nationally-unifying religion called cricket.

The applause that was attended with Sachin’s last walks to and from the wicket has reverberated around the world. Sachin Tendulkar has made his peace with the fact that there is life after cricket. But millions of worshippers are consumed by a feeling of hollowness as they try to come to terms with cricket without Tendulkar and the fact for the fans remains the same “there are two kinds of batsmen in the world, one is Sachin and the two all other batsmen”

I conclude with a Bow saying “Cricket is the best entertainment that God ever created on earth – but Sachin is more entertaining than cricket”.

AFRICA:  A Continent “Making others Rich”

This blog is indeed a continuation to my previous post “Africa the Spectator”. This post gives us more insights with approximate numbers of the gigantic wealth (Minerals Resources) Africa possesses.  Not only that, but also how much of gadgets of everyday life depend on resources from Africa and indeed we can say “How Africa’s Minerals fuel the world”. With all those fantastic resources, one would expect that folks living in Africa would have outrun Europe a thousand years ago and should had colonized Mars by this time. Not only west, but now from their lessons China and other Asian countries started extracting rich mineral resources in whatever way possible from the continent.

“Africa: The richest and the poorest Continent, Rich in terms of natural resources, poor in terms of life standards. Practically speaking from Laptops to cellular phone, cars to airplanes, all kinds of everyday items are made using minerals that come from Africa. Let’s get into some details

•   Catalytic converters are fitted to cars to reduce pollution, and platinum and rhodium are key components. Africa produces most of the world’s platinum and Rhodium for this purpose. In 2012, South Africa produced 128 tonnes of platinum, 170 tonnes of Gold, 8.2 million carats of diamonds and 255 million tonnes of coal.
•  Cellular Phones, laptops and other small electronic devices use parts made from Tantalum. Africa produces approx. 70% of World’s Tantalum in which Mozambique produces 24%, Democratic Republic of Congo 11%, Rwanda 20%, Ethiopia 9% and other African countries contribute 7%.
•  Rechargeable batteries often use cobalt in their electrodes and demand for portable electronic devices has created a huge market for the mineral. Here Africa accounts for 58% of the world’s cobalt

With all these, a simple Question that keeps pestering me, If Africa is so rich in resources, why are millions of its people living and dying in poverty?

Post your views….

Africa the Spectator

As the famous saying goes “No hurry in Africa”, indeed it’s the same thing that’s happening in the continent. A continent with its richness in natural resources is turned out to be a spectator as the titans, US and China clash for their dominance.

As the Chinese make deep inroads into Africa, America is counting on soft power-and the continent’s young people-to stay on top. With the recent explorations of crude oil in Tanzania and other Africa countries, each of the titans are having their own strategy to extract as much as possible before the rest of the economies open their eyes. The best strategy followed by china so far is funding infrastructure development in Africa and extracting valuable minerals.

If we go into statistics, America’s trade with Africa rose from about $30billion in 2001 to just over $100billion 10 yrs later, while china’s grew more dramatically, from $10billion to $130billion over the same period, according to the collated figures from the UN. In reality, there is very little direct competition between Chinese and American firms in Africa. Most of the US firms are involved in the higher end of the market, such as renewable energy, computer software and medical equipment, while Chinese firms dominate the lower, consumer goods category.

The point of confluence is oil, but both the US and China dominate the trade in Africa’s natural resources. A lot of the growth in trade over the past decade has been fuelled by an increase in exports of crude oil from Africa to the two powers. The difference is that China has diversified its appetite for other natural resources and grown its exports to Africa much faster, overtaking the US in this area a decade ago in 2003. Both china and the US are playing a long term game.

Ultimately, however, the battle for Africa is not one for present resources but future potential. The real contest is between China’s hard power and America’s soft power and the real tragedy is that Africans and their governments are largely spectators, rather than contestants, in the battle for the future of the continent.

Far from arguing about which of the two giants is better, it’s time for Africans to get busy and figure out how they can benefit from the “clash of the Titans”.