Random Musings - November 2025

Women in Blue:

 If Kapil’s devils in 1983 created history to win the Men’s cricket world cup, the Harmanpreet’s angels did so in 2025 winning the Women’s cricket world cup. Watching the match was a treat and a welcome change.

The sheer energy the girls had was palpably visible. When a bowler started her run up, seeing the girls especially at covers, mid off and point crouch like tigers ready to spring was sheer poetry. They reminded me of Pataudi and Brijesh Patel. The fielding of the team was excellent. Some of the girls when batting really hit powerful sixes and the sheer confidence they exuded by just standing and watching the ball cross the fence was sublime.

What was really heart warming was the crowd turnout as the match finished only around midnight. The DY Patil stadium with a capacity of over 45,000 was packed to the gills and the support our women in blue got was unbelievable. I don’t think the girls expected a full house crowd cheering them and this response should motivate them to do even better.

Reading about each of the girls, what stuck me was their humble backgrounds, the level of sacrifice and hard work by the players, their families and above all their belief and commitment in a game that is dominated by the Men. 

Know Our Girls in Blue

The girls have done the country proud and companies are flocking to use them for endorsements seeing the national recognition they command. But one must applaud the BCCI which is probably the only sports body in India that across political establishments have worked to make the game and the players big, bigger and the best.

The Strange Behaviour of Congress:

The natural assumption anybody would make is that a political party is keen to win elections every time they are held and stay in power. When one looks at the behaviour of the Congress party in general this assumption gets turned on its head that is politically baffling.

Any resident of Bengaluru will readily vouch that road conditions are pathetic. Every single road across the city, except maybe in the central business area or some key connecting road like the airport, has been dug up simultaneously including in the smallest lanes, of housing areas. Between Water, Sewage and God knows what else, the ENTIRE CITY has been dug up making travel almost impossible. One can’t even walk on most roads. That any Govt with an iota of sense can take (apparently) infra development projects across the city simultaneously is beyond logic.

Even granting this, the pace of work is pathetically slow. You don’t see more than a few workmen at each site. In some areas plants have grown big. This is like that tonsuring of the head story. The barber tonsures a portion off your head making you look like an idiot and then runs off to find other customers. Once he has collected enough customers to his fill, he slowly gets down to the actual work of tonsuring all his clients.

As if this wasn’t enough, the Govt clearly makes no differentiation between Congress and Opposition elected areas to dig up. But once dug up, the opposition areas are taken up for work – God knows when. Officially the Congress Govt is punishing the citizens of those areas which did not elect Congress by giving only 50% of the amount they give Congress MLA areas for development.  

The Ministers are on a warpath with anyone who dares to complain or even not invest in Karnataka due to this obvious apathy. If one hears the motor mouth comments of the Ministers against every investor in Karnataka, potential investors you are left wondering what the whole strategy is? They dismiss potential investors who chose other states with contemptuous comments.

An opposition ruled Tamil Nadu signed MoU’s for 53 projects and set up a nodal agency for Defence manufacturing in 2018 and earned the right to get a Defence Corridor project. Karnataka, a defence manufacturing hub since decades demonstrated contempt as usual and now cries foul. Decades back a dynamic Chadrababu Naidu managed to get Microsoft to invest in Hyderabad, termed it as Cyberabad and that story is legendary given that every single infotech company at that time was based in Karnataka.

Anybody who follows business and politics will know that he means what he says and walks the talk.

A quick recap of the legendary story of the encounter between Chadrababu Naidu and Bill Gates is worth sharing though for those of us in the know, there was a lot more fireworks and sixers by Naidu.

Look at the Lok Sabha elections of 2014, 2019 and 2024 where Congress contested 464, 423 and 328 seats respectively. A fall of 30% in the number of seats they even contested. Look at Bihar. In 2015 Congress contested just 42 seats and won 27, in 2020 this was 70 and won 19 and in 2025 its 61 – hardly 17% to 29% of total seats.

In Uttar Pradesh the Congress out of 403 seats contested 355 in 2012 winning 28, 114 in 2017 winning 7 and 399 in 2022 winning just 2. In 2017 they contested just 28% of the seats.

A reading of their comments and opinions over the last decade especially where the nation is concerned – the less said the better. Be it counter terror strikes, Balakot, Operation Sindoor, defending terrorists and terror apologists, constantly painting India as a terrible country in every global platform, asking for foreign power intervention to effect change in Govt, the list is long. They have blatantly supported Pakistan viewpoints by questioning events which even Pakistan has acknowledged.  

An analysis of most issues shows a similar illogical trend. For someone who claims to be a national party this behaviour whether in contesting elections, attracting investors, treating the citizens or even on national security is strange. Google offers to invest 15 Billion to set up a data centre in India and here is the Congress minister of Information Technology saying this - "Future ready investments" - seriously ? A data centre for AI is not future ready  and Google is NOT genuine ?

The only logic one can arrive at is that the party does not want to win elections. They want enough leverage to matter and influence politics but otherwise would happily step aside for others which is justified with another strange logic that the objective is to defeat/ weaken Modi. A larger analysis of the party, its friends, behaviour and comments even create a valid theory that they seek a second partition of India. More on this next time. 

Gaza Ceasefire

While the jury is still out on how sustainable this Gaza ceasefire will be, the bigger question on a more lasting peace is still unanswered. The devastation is incredibly huge and will take decades to rebuild. Every family and child living will carry the scars of this event for long and what effect they will have on their future lives is anybody’s guess. This is how the cycle of violence sustains and feeds on itself. There are no easy solutions even though some will say that one side must surrender totally – whatever that means – since surrender is seen as the total extinction of a race or nation.

However tragic the events, without going into who is to blame, who started it, who exacerbated it, what is interesting to note are the following which nobody likes to talk about much.

1. Egypt closed its borders immediately after the Gaza war started and nobody objected to how the Palestine people were abandoned by Egypt. Egypt to maintain security has worked with Israel in creating a blockade against the Hamas who control Gaza.
2. Jordan which had accepted over 700,000 Palestinians hit back at them when they tried to kill King Hussain of Jordan. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 after Egypt.
3. A civil war erupted in 1975 after the Palestians settled in Lebanon leading to a curbing of their civil rights in that country.
4. UAE has signed a peace treaty with Israel and opposed the militant groups in the region.
5. Kuwait expelled thousands of Palestinians soon after the Gulf war and view them with hostility.
6. Saudi Arabia is the only nation yet to shake hands with Israel but unofficially the two nations have a deeper relationship than understood. Have seen rather interesting behaviour of even their military when it comes to Israel way back in 2009.

What is seen and given wide publicity is the huge crowds, the marches and protests by the Palestinian supporters in western cities like London, Europe and on university campuses across USA. These images take centrestage over all else - and understandably so.

The romance of the west with this group is quite unlike the distrust they attract from fellow travellers in the Arab world – even as the Arabs recognise a state called Palestine.

The Arab world hasn’t taken in any refugees fleeing from the mayhem over the last 2 years or exactly shed copious tears unlike the western capitals – and there is a probably a message in the above list which is uncomfortable to discuss. The other uncomfortable thing to discuss is giving the devil the due credit in this effort - Donald Trump.