Quick notes: Tourism bungle | Missing VCs

• India shot itself in the foot: Indian authorities demolished commercial tourist structures along the banks of Pangong Lake, citing violation of Wildlife Act. "Had these commercial set ups not been demolished, we could have easily detected Chinese intrusion into Pangong Tso area. Taking advantage of darkness, Chinese troops managed to enter eight kilometers inside Indian territory"..... "The govt decision to demolish the tourist structures had left more than 500 people jobless. Besides, tourism activities by these temporary tents were preventing the Chinese from staking claim on territory".



• Bharat: DRDO drone likely to be deployed in Ladakh. The drone can provide real-time video transmission and has advanced night vision capabilities.



• Indian VCs are missing: "Good start-ups are getting sold to foreign firms, Indian investors need to play greater role"



• App craze: TikTok may be gone but another ByteDance app is thriving in India. About 74% of those who downloaded the Resso app are from India.



• Who is a Brahmin?

Some people ("traditionalists") questioned my reading of those who didn't do Sandhya can't be considered Brahmin. But that is exactly what the Manusmriti states.

न तिष्ठति तु यः पूर्वां नौपास्ते यश्च पश्चिमाम् ।
स शूद्रवद् बहिष्कार्यः सर्वस्माद् द्विजकर्मणः ॥ २.१०३ ॥ pic.twitter.com/aWg9DLRqeh

— Sankrant Sanu सानु संक्रान्त ਸੰਕ੍ਰਾਂਤ ਸਾਨੁ (@sankrant) March 28, 2020

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Actually Varna of a person is decided after completing of education not on the basis of birth. यज्ञोपवीत is a संस्कार to begin वेदाध्ययन. Vedas do not prohibit education to shudra but it says to teach vedas even to a shudra.

— Viśhāl | विशालः | விஷால் (@vedicvishal) July 7, 2020




• Feminists want patriarchy of Islamists: Swedish feminists have destroyed the patriarchy and with it the male dominance hierarchy. In doing this these same feminists forgot that most women's instinct is to mate up and across that hierarchy. So what happens when the dominance is gone? Women withdraw from men, marriage, and childbirth. But the feminists actually run Sweden now, and the instinctive need for the male dominance hierarchy hasn't gone away. So the feminists import hundred of thousands of men who regard feminism as dangerous nonsense, and who will restore the male dominance hierarchy the only way that it can be restored: by restoring the patriarchy. This will solve the women's deep-level problem, because instinct trumps ideology every time.



• Setback for indigenous alternatives: The planned import of several categories of weapons -- specifically light tanks, Israeli Spike LR anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), Israeli Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), US-made SIG Sauer assault rifles and MiG-29 fighter aircraft -- will undercut Indian programmes to develop indigenous alternatives.



• China may buy Russia's Su-57: Unlike China, India does not have a fifth-generation fighter, so the Su-57 is an attractive warplane to India.



• Floods force China to blow up dam: China blasted holes in the Chuhe River dam in order to “alleviate the pressure of flood control” at the massive Three Gorges Dam.

Quick notes: Visa Gods | Indian inaction...

• Visa Gods and Brain Drain: Why the Indian govt and media get all worked up about declining opportunities for Indian out-migration has never made sense.
  
  In the early 2000s, when India’s rise was viewed in a positive light, many had hoped that like the East Asian communities in the US — Japanese, Koreans and Chinese — Indians in the US would also return home, invest in India and contribute to the home country’s development. However, for a variety of reasons, this expectation is yet to be realised.
  
  It would be interesting to see how many of those who attended Modi’s rallies abroad have decided to return home to contribute to India’s “atmanirbharata”. . . . Taxing the Brain Drain.



• Chabahar port rail project: Iran drops India after inking $400 billion China deal. That China pulled the strings behind the scene cannot be doubted. The possibility of Iran leasing out the Chabahar port to China at a later date cannot be ruled out. If that happens, China would have extended its strategic reach to the Pakistan-Iran coast.
  
  Act quickly: India dragged its feet on building the rail link from Chabahar to Zahedan. First, the delays were over contract disagreements, then the fear of US sanctions, and later, after the US provided a “carve-out” to India on the port and the rail link, the difficulty under the sanctions regime in finding international suppliers for material... From Nepal to Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Iran, Delhi has made commitments on building power projects, highways, railways, and other infrastructure. Each proceeds slowly or not at all. The Pancheshwar Dam project in Nepal, for instance, has been hanging fire since 1991.



• Dr Bharat Karnad on India's inaction:
  
  Commercial satellite imagery reportedly shows the LAC has shifted 12 to 15 kms in Depsang, 1 km in Galwan, 2 to 4 kms in Gogra and 8 kms in Pangong Lake. This would be by far the largest loss of territory to China since the 1962 war. Is this observation correct?
  I have been warning since the beginning about the quite considerable loss of territory. I estimate that China's policy of what I have called incremental annexation has resulted in the loss of some 1,300 sq kms of Indian territory in the new millennium.
  
  Should the buck not stop with NSA Ajit Doval?
  Well, yes, because he is supposed to ingest all intel, field reports, military briefings, analyses and recommendations from the China Study Group, et al, and alight on policy options for the PM.
  
  You have said repeatedly that Indian intelligence knew about the Chinese build up for the last one year. More specifically, intelligence had told the army about Chinese movements in the LAC area, but the army took this to be normal spring time activity. Would you say this has been an operational lapse by the army?
  As I have already said, there's no excuse for XIV Corps Headquarters in Leh or army headquarters in Delhi and for the army misreading imagery intelligence transmitted to the Defence Intelligence Agency by DIPAC.



• “You must make Tibet a core issue”: By referring it as the India China border, India had ceded 2.5 million square kilometres and legitimized Chinese claim, he stressed. “Now in Doklam and Galwan Valley, what are you arguing about..one kilometre here, or two-kilometre…you have already conceded 2. 5 million square kilometres of land. You must take it back; say it is the Indo-Tibet border and it is disputed…You must make Tibet a core issue”.

Quick notes: Three Gorges dam | Tech innovation...

• Boondoggle Record floods raise questions about China's Three Gorges Dam. “One of the major justifications for the Three Gorges Dam was flood control, but less than 20 years after its completion we have the highest floodwater in recorded history”. . . . . Dikes collapse




• Tibetan Government-in-Exile: The US has for the first time directly provided funds to the Tibetan Government-in-Exile based in India, a move likely to rile up China.



• Rajeev on Chinese overreach: 'If the economy begins to flounder, the empire may fall apart sooner than we think... The fatal mistake for the USSR was the invasion of Afghanistan. Quite possibly the fatal mistake for the Chinese empire is the assault on Ladakh'.



• The big secret of tech innovation: Although this may sound strange, copying is good for innovation. This is how Chinese technology companies got started — by adapting Silicon Valley’s technologies for Chinese use and improving on them. The Chinese routinely monitor what app is achieving success elsewhere, and duplicate it before they start adding features and innovating; they learn from the best and improve.
  
  Steve Jobs built the Macintosh by copying the windowing interface from the Palo Alto Research Center. As he admitted in 1994, “Picasso had a saying, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal’; and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” Almost every Apple product has features that were first developed by others. Mark Zuckerberg also built Facebook by copying from MySpace and Friendster, and he continues to copy products.



• Chinese firm among bidders for Vande Bharat trains: The emergence of a Chinese company for these train sets being promoted as indigenous products comes after a violent face-off between India and China



• Fail: India’s top exports to China remain in the raw materials category. “China has been very effectively using non-tariff barriers to curb imports that it wants to avoid. On the other hand, it also uses these restrictions as a political tool to control bilateral relations”. A contingency plan, prepared by the govt bats for increasing duties on the top 100 imports from China.



• Delete Facebook: Delete FB account or quit army: Delhi High Court to officer



• Cycling could become the new normal: "Cycling for short distances can result in an annual benefit of Rs 1.8 trillion to the Indian economy and it also has the potential of increasing personal fuel savings by over Rs 27 billion. Investment in cycling infrastructure has economic benefits up to 5.5 times the initial amount pumped in," says a communique from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.



• Superstrata's carbon fiber e-bike: True unibody construction with no seams or welding. “This piece comes out as a single piece from our machines”.

Quick notes: Tibet card | Brigadier Dalvi...

• Play the Tibet card with China: 'The logical step is to challenge the very legitimacy of the Chinese claim over Tibet'. China abrogates treaties at will.

Bharat Ratna & loud mouthed A.B.Vajpayee formally recognised Tibet as part of China in 2003.'Lion' Modi ended all formal relations of GOI with Dalai lama & with Tibet Govt. in exile in 2018 .So appeasing China was a joint Congress-BJP project, despite 'tu-tu mai mai' in TV shows.

— Tapas Banerji (@t_banerji) July 3, 2020




• Brig John Parashram Dalvi: The man who told India about Nehru's Himalayan blunder. "And let the guilty, and their political successors contemplate, the great crime of sending brave men to do battle against AK47's with WW I obsolete.303 Lee Enfield bolt action rifles".



• Rethink of India's China policy: “We need to join forces with the US, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Indonesia and western Europe to take on China economically''. . . . . “Will Mr Modi pitch national interests over economic ones is a political question”.

Intellectis hate techies because we mean business, we get things done. Modern intellectualism (more hopefully later on this from this twitter handle) is all about the abstract and the art of not doing anything while appearing to be doing a lot!

— KVSarmaJ (@kvsarmaj) July 2, 2020




• Biden victory is CCP victory: HK businessman says it like it is.

Elmer Yuan: #BeijingIntercoursJoe Biden was responsible for China relationship under @BarackObama his very corrupt family made huge money from China. It will be hopeless for🇭🇰,Taiwan and the free world if he gets elected b/c it will mean the #CCP won against the free world. pic.twitter.com/2R4nwMQ4Q0

— Against the Tide (Idź Pod Prąd) TV (@AgainstTideTV) July 6, 2020




• The Guru is a principle, not a person:

the guru is a principle, not a person: @MakrandParanspe.

the world is on fire: in duality, you never find peace. that which helps you get out of duality/triguna is the guru.#gurupurnima message

— राजीवः श्रीनिवासः (@RajeevSrinivasa) July 5, 2020

Quick notes: Ignored inputs | India's options...

• Flagging Chinese incursions for long, say Ladakhis: “Not just for the past couple of months, I have been raising these concerns since 2015”.. The Facebook posts by Chodon, a BJP leader from a nomadic family, date back to May 2019. She also shared her earlier post in which she had written that Chinese PLA soldiers had entered 6 km into Indian territory at Dhola village in Nyoma Block, unfurled their national flag and stopped locals from hoisting the Indian, Tibetan, and Buddhist flags.




• Naiveté is in our DNA: "With China, we have very good mechanisms in place to maintain peace and tranquility" - Gen Bipin Rawat.

Just 11 month old interview with Army chief then and now CDS , Gen Bipin Rawat .. ( 27.07.2020) @IndiaToday
Must be realizing as Government. Trusting #China was big mistake .#LAC #LadakhBorder #ChinaIndiaFaceoff pic.twitter.com/0uQgVfTruA

— Ashraf Wani اشرف وانی (@ashraf_wani) June 30, 2020




• PLA using Tibetans against India: The CCP has obviously decided to integrate more Tibetans into its defence forces; to start with, in the paramilitary forces, giving them good salaries and buying their fidelity. The Tibet Military District has many senior Tibetan officers of the rank of colonels, senior colonels and major generals (never higher, as CCP does not trust the Tibetans that much); but this gives a clear indication that the Tibetans will participate in future conflicts with India (in all probability, some were already present in Galwan). It does not augur well for the relations between India and Tibet.



• India’s options against China: "The PLA lost the advantage of surprise, preemption  and the window that was available upto end June while the Indian Army reserves were being mobilised, acclimatised and deployed. The likely plans of the PLA have been war-gamed for years by the Indian Army, and I have no doubts that the PLA will come to grief". - Lt Gen (retd) HS Panag



• CCP's hunger: China's super trawlers are stealing fish stocks in North West Pacific, South America and Western Africa.



• Israel shuts evangelical Christian TV channel: Israel's regulator has ordered an evangelical Christian broadcaster's new channel off the air, saying it applied to serve a Christian audience but instead has sought to persuade Jews with the gospel of Jesus.



• The year of the electric bike.: Pedal-assisted models can reach speeds of about 30 miles per hour, helping people get to work without having to rely on public transportation while also offering a chance to exercise.



• Robot uses UVC light to disinfect warehouses : The system can neutralize about 90% of coronavirus particles on surfaces.