Adios, Diego Armando Maradona: The Cosmic Kite
A legend, an individual whose every word and action are headline news.
Diego Armando Maradona, popularly known as El Diego among his fans, passed away at the age of
sixty, though the Argentina and Napoli idol’s life is more than one can suffice in our 10 regular lives.
From the mop-haired prodigy that initially took the Primera Division by storm, through his
adventures in Spain, Italy, and on the international stage, as well as his retirement life, whatever
Maradona did always catch the public eye.
I can honestly say that fans of my generation aren’t qualified to comment about Maradona. He can
be compared to a comet that illuminated the sky and disappeared well before the millennials knew
what the sky is. The only way our interaction with this comet has been through the leased telescope
of edited YouTube videos and stories from the die-hard oldies.
He always had a bond with the ball that steered jealousy and fandom among his peers; won titles
with teams that would have otherwise never even once be anywhere near the podium; could gobble
on steaks previous night and dribble through the entire pitch the very next day. Diego Maradona
was the kind of an extraordinary player (very few exist though) who could be marked out by
opposition in the entire game but still produce that one pass that wins the World Cup. 1986 world
cup was a mere example of that brilliance. As a matter of fact, he has credit for football’s first viral
video.
Even at the summit of his fame, he was always humbled by the fact where he rose from and have
had always wanted to give it back to his people. Putting on a highly rated play for his fans became
more than a responsibility. There was not even a single moment where he had a doubt about his
caliber and always knew he was the superior one on the pitch, and that it was his duty to give us, the
fans, value for our time. Whether he is inside or outside of the field, with the ball under his feet or
the mic in front of him, Maradona always drew you, friends or enemies, closer to him.
The audience was his ammunition as much as he was theirs. Unlike many who have graced the pitch,
Maradona rarely did celebrate a goal by pointing fingers at himself or by glancing at his team with
the expectation of recognition. He played for his audience and their happiness. His celebration, of
outstretched arms and widened torso, always pointed to the stands, to express his gratitude. And
they always responded. They were behind him by the thousands, ready to invest time, energy,
money, and hopes. Day after day, week after week, the whole stadium sang his songs. For
Argentineans, he was Freddie Mercury and the Pope amalgamated into one body.
Whenever I had the opportunity to speak to my grandfather’s old colleagues (older, wiser, and
luckier) about football, I could feel their sparkle in their eyes and voices whenever Diego came up in
our conversations. They didn’t care for anyone else in Football half as much as they did for Diego.
And isn’t that what we call the epitome of greatness? That, even after these many years, your fans
still care about you. The joy and euphoria you gave them in one decade have outlasted more than
what the current generation could offer in the past three decades. Even though many may argue
whether Diego Maradona may or may not have been the greatest player, but he was dearly loved
more than anyone else ever has or will be. At his farewell match for Boca Juniors, a sobbing
Maradona said “La pelota no se mancha.” The ball does not show the dirt.
It never did, Diego. With the ball, you were football’s salvation. Hope you have found your peace!
Nature is Healing:
Neither did the exotic mammals return to the canals in Venice nor did the endangered Malabar
civet sprung on the Kerala streets last year. Almost all the news and posts claiming “nature is
healing” during the COVID-19 were a joke to lighten up a heavy year. The reality is the pandemic
is not leaving us with a healthier planet.
If anything, the year 2020 actually taught us was how much further back in time we have to go or
how much efforts is required in future to clean up the giant mess we’ve made on the Earth.
As early as January, for the first time in decades, it seemed as if atmosphere over China had
cleared – the first country to deal with the pandemic and its economic fallout. As the pandemic
progressed beyond boundaries, similar findings of cleaner atmosphere emerged across the
globe. According to NASA, the pandemic led to an almost 25 percent drop in nitrogen dioxide
(found in tailpipe emissions) concentrations globally by the end of November. But we haven’t
paid attention to the bigger picture when it comes to air quality.
As nitrogen dioxide pollution fell, another dangerous pollutant in the form of particulate matter
seemed to stagnate and even rise across countries. Particulate matter pollution was extremely
dangerous during the pandemic because of how it affected people’s lungs and hearts — organs
that COVID-19 impairs, too.
Researchers are still pulling their hairs to find answers to why particulate pollution is growing on
the onset of decreasing nitrogen dioxide concentrations and have rather come up with an
interesting hypothesis – more particulate matter came from diesel-burning trucks – delivered more
than usual as people shopped from home. Well, this hypothesis is yet to be verified.
Even though the pollution levels are dropping, the effect is temporary as the nitrogen dioxide
levels have already started roaring as lockdown restrictions were lightened up. Hence, it can be
concluded that the reduction in pollution that is temporary isn’t actually intentional and therefore
strategies, awareness and stringent efforts are required to reduce air pollution.
Worldwide emissions of greenhouses gases dropped to their lowest levels since April 2006 and
is projected to fall further by 7 percent till the pandemic looms around. But to halt the world from
falling towards the imminent catastrophic climatic changes, we will need to make sure that the
emissions of each year for another 2 decades are cut down more than 7 percent – without a
pandemic forcing us to do the same.
Ultimately, this isn’t a numbers game. Once we’ve unleashed pollutants into our surroundings,
they will come back to haunt us. The carbon dioxide burning up our planet is making summers
unbearable and wildfires more devastating. Amazon wildfires to Delhi pollution, the examples are
right in front of us. All we need is to pay attention to our surrounding and act more as a
responsible resident rather tenant.
As we stepped into another year, we’re still in the thick of the global health crisis. Once it passes,
however, pollution will still pose a huge threat to mankind and its abode. Unless, we heed the
advice of scientists and make more stringent efforts, the matter will really go off our reach.
Hence, we can’t rely on more pandemic to teach us where we stand.
As more COVID-19 vaccines are getting approved by regulatory bodies, attention will
undoubtedly turn to the rollout and have plans already been initiated in a few. Hence, comes the
inevitable introduction of Vaccine nationalism – occurs when national governments &
pharmaceutical manufacturers sign bilateral agreements to supply the former’s population with
vaccines first. While this approach is, to an extent, rational and will undoubtedly have domestic
political advantages, there could be not only human consequences, but also economic ones as
well.
International institutions such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations are
vocally supporting the multilateral option to globally collaborate the COVID-19 vaccine supply.
But some of the world’s leading economies, such as the United States and United Kingdom,
have been reluctant to commit to this approach and have instead continued direct bilateral
agreements with vaccine manufacturers.
While it’s true that the vaccine nationalism can help improve the situation of those countries,
however their economies would still depend on the subsequent recovery in other countries that
are yet to immunize their populations. There are several sectors that will not be able to revive
back to their initial position until the global population is vaccinated. Travel, tourism,
Entertainment and transportation are just four examples of these sectors, in order to be fully
functional, heavily depend on a globally connected world. Hence vaccinating individual countries
will not be enough to revive them, and thereby perpetuating the economic cost of COVID-19.
A research analysing the costs aspects of vaccine nationalism shows that given the enormous
impact of the current disruption to the global economy, the vaccine introduction and its shared
global access, can have considerable economic benefits. However, these could be noticeably
reduced by vaccine nationalism.
For example, if the vaccine-producing countries, such as the United States, European Union, UK,
India and Russia, can immunize a significantly large share of their populations, the estimated
loss for the world economy in GDP would reduce from 3.7% to 1.3%. However, the lack of
access to vaccines for the rest of the world would still result in a GDP loss of up to $1.2 trillion
per year, or about $103 billion a month.
Pricing of vaccines have been affected as a result of a large number of bilateral deals between
nations and vaccine producers and could eventually lead to the pricing out to governments of
less wealthy countries’ access to some vaccines. In fact, it is believed that the major economies
will have more to gain by making a effective vaccine globally available.
Based on estimates, it would cost around $25–30 billion to supply low economies with vaccines.
The high-income countries combined can lose about $110 billion a year if these countries are
denied a supply however if the former countries would provide the finance for vaccine supply to
the latter, there could be a benefit-to-cost ratio of 4 to 1. This proves an example for the
economic incentives to globally coordinated vaccine production and distribution.
The costs of global vaccine development and distribution inferior in comparison to the enormous
cost of global economic disruption. This speaks out for ways to renew and provide significantly
larger investment in supporting global vaccine distribution. Ultimately, it could be in the national
interest to cooperate globally.
GameStop Saga: The latest episode of the populist revolt
The proposed principles of Wall Street hold that stock markets are an efficient and effective
medium of information and capital. And the biggest story of the week surely involves the
drama around GameStop, a scuffling brick and mortar seller of videogames that turned into
the rope in a tug of war between a driven internet mob and Wall Street messiahs. The retail
chain has been in decline for years as it was squeezed out by other mainstream online
retailers and digital services as a result of this reality, its stock price went below three dollars
for some time. That is, until a few days back.
The simplest version for what occurred is that a clan of online mischievous users in Reddit’s
r/WallStreetBets forum decided to initiate a “short squeeze” by pushing GameStop’s stock
price up as high as $380 per share. The strategy worked as it caused the big-money hedge
funds namely Melvin Capital and Citron Research, to lose billions of dollars in the process.
While many Twitter and Reddit users encourage the clan for its actions, the US government
has told that they have started to monitor the situations which led to the stock shock.
However, the most unusual thing about the whole incident was that it was a long time due to
an establishment such as Wall Street being challenged by a bunch of Redditors. This kind of
populist revolt on many powerful institutions has been happening for years, some have
unnoticed. In fact, publishers, movie production houses, food & restaurant chains to name a
few, have been forced to yield power to their critics especially online. Even the field of
politics has been untouched with the latest episode that took place at Capitol, invoked by a
band of Twitch streamers.
Whatever the goals might be, these internet-based revolts always tend to adopt a familiar
pattern. One fine morning, a group proceeds to take matters into their own hand against a
structure/order it believes is corrupt. These groups identify structural weakness and plan out
ways to exploit them, with the help of social media for visibility and support. With enough
highly driven people believing in the same direction, they eventually triumph or get enough
recognition required. These crusades can be pursued in good or in bad faith, and some often
turn into deeply destructive whereas some can knock the status quo in useful ways by
revealing injustice, testing outdated norms, or putting idle gatekeepers on notice.
The internet has given license to ordinary citizens -anyone with an internet connection and
Twitter account can start hashtag campaigns against anything everything – by giving them
new ideas and tools, which can further be used to exploit the flaws in the systems. Once
these flaws are identified, the user writes, rebels, tears down elites and supreme institutions
out of anger and hatred for being lied to and withheld from the rightful information and other
needs. The result always is a kind of vindictive nihilism, a craving to burn down the order
without a clear idea of what is supposed to happen next.
The insurgents may not win in the long run as these powers always have a way of
reasserting themselves after immediate shocks. Already, we have started to see the same in
this particular of GameStop as its crusade is coming to a halt. But for the Reddit users (or
rather day-traders), this had been a victory, as they always wanted it to be a symbolic one,
the ignite for a larger wildfire. They might lose their shirts but were successful in sending out
the message that with enough passion and determination, any horde can turn the market on
its head.
They have arrived, and Wall Street will never ever be the same.
Poland Protests: Beginning of a New Revolution
Poland have been protesting for some or other reasons since the fall of communism but the
year 2020 was unique in terms of protest. Protests like ban on abortion, or LGBTQ+ rights
are happening diligently but there had always been a common thread behind all these
protests. This year, energy and unity shown by Polish was unbeatable and unparalleled.
The conservative Polish party government took full advantage of pandemic and the
lockdown followed by introducing new proposition to existing abortion laws. As per the new
propositions, abortion is restricted even if foetus has incurable congenital defects. The same
government tried to impose the same thing earlier but had to trace back due to large
backlash received from various countries. But this time, the situation was altogether different
due to pandemic.
The previous law gave legal permission to abortion when mothers’ life is at risk, foetus has
defects and when pregnancy is result of rape. On 22nd October, legal provision came into
effect and as a result, many people showed their objection through various social media
platforms due to limitations on gathering and health risks. But when these means didn’t
cause any ripple, in spite of the lockdown, huge protests started to occur which witnessed
participation from all polish citizens including innovative ways of maintaining to metres
distance while holding signs or interrupting traffic.
These protests also witnessed huge response from the youth as most of them were in their
