 Hello and let's talk about the Rajiv Gandhi Kheil Ratna Awards. These awards along with the Arjuna Awards and the Dronacharya Awards were announced on Saturday. This year has been unique when it comes to these awards as for the first time five sports persons were awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Kheil Ratna Award. That's the highest honour awarded to a sports person in the country. These are cricket player Role Sharma, table tennis player Manika Batra, Indian women's hockey captain Rani Rampal and team Mariapan who is a Paralympian along with wrestler Vinesh Fogat. The same happened with the Arjuna Awards too with 27 sports persons receiving the coveted award. 13 coaches have been presented with the Dronacharya Award, eight of whom have won it in the lifetime achievement category. This is despite the rules stating that except in exceptional circumstances, only one sports person would be conferred with the Rajiv Gandhi Kheil Ratna Award and 15 would get the Arjuna Award. These announcements are left to sporting fraternity and sports watches a bit puzzled and even bemused, with questions being raised as to what this implies for the award system itself. We talk in news clicks Leslie Xavier on this issue. Leslie, thank you for joining us. So the Rajiv Gandhi Kheil Ratna Arjuna Dronacharya awardees have been named and it's quite a big list this time. So there's been a lot of commentary about that of course and these are some of the most important awards in Indian sport. So do you see how do you first of all, how do you see this huge number of Canada awardees who have been given this award especially at this time? It's unprecedented. Circumstances are happening around the world. So unprecedented list of awardees. So I one can't, I mean, possibly find a logic to this because as we know it's a year where there's no sporting action at all. But yeah, let's give the benefit of the doubt that awards are decided not by this year's performance alone, but the previous two years that's the criteria set by the Arjuna award rules as well as the Rajiv Gandhi Kheil Ratna rules. But the point is that there are certain rules that have been stipulated as far as the number of athletes who can be considered for the award every year and in Kheil Ratna the rule is pretty straightforward. Every year one awardee because it's considered the top most award of the country. So one award unless there is unprecedented circumstances like for instance an Olympic year where just before the awards if three, four athletes have won Olympic medals obviously they all deserve Kheil Ratna. So that happened in 2016, four athletes were considered and this is say Olympic year as well, but Olympics haven't happened and the award list also is questionable that way. The presence of certain athletes in it, for instance someone like Manika Bhatla whose performance, whose the award has been given based based on her victories in the Commonwealth Games. With all this due respect to the victories and the medals won, it's also very clear that Commonwealth Games is not exactly the pinnacle of, I mean standard-wise it's not exactly the pinnacle in table tennis. So she would have been a, I mean much more of a bigger name in table tennis world at she won a medal, just a medal not even gold in the Asian Games. So there are hierarchies in sport as well. So I mean rather than get into the eligibility of these athletes because it's a given that all these athletes are international athletes and they have at some point won certain medals at the Asian level, at the Commonwealth level, regardless of what over the quality of the shield as such. But when a criteria is set for the number of awards to be given and also when we are considering these to be the most sought-after awards for sports persons in the country, Dronacharya, it adds a mythical proportions attached to it. We were all in awe when we were sports persons ourselves. We would look up to people who have won Dronacharya, I mean Arjun Awad and Kerala Ratna came in later. So by diluting its quality that way by giving, I mean I know applications might have come, I know committee might have deliberated all of that. We will get into the deliberation part of it later in this conversation. But still if there is a set criteria that per year only one award for Kerala Ratna and up to 15 which has been relaxed up to 17 till previous years but right now it's 27 Arjun Awad, that's too much. And it just kills the the stature of the award. It dilutes it. I mean much like many of the institutions that has been whose stature has been killed by the current disposition, this also is going that way. Right. So could we talk a bit about what the procedure is usually, how does it happen, was it any different this year and how does this whole system work during the time of the pandemic? So the usual case it's the federations that nominate at least for the Arjun Awad and the Kerala Ratna. So they are their own internal mechanisms how they decide which athlete to push for the Arjun Awad, nominate for the Arjun Awad. Of course there is a sidetrack to it about political push that happens. I mean the ruling government if you have people who can back you then there is a sure short case that you might win the award. So it's all this thing but general set procedure is that the Federation nominates you which is your application and then there is a Arjun Awad committee and Kerala Ratna committee which is convened and they elaborate over the list and then they shortlist it and then the final award is approved. The committee members come from various fields. I mean sports persons, former sports persons are there, administrators are there, of course the ministry officials and the sports minister presides over all these things and at the same time media persons are also there, sports journalists are also part of it. Now it's a different question whether sports journalists have a say in it on a larger sense because you are sitting with former sports persons and administrations so they but still their voice will also be heard I'm sure and so but the nomination procedure is where the trick happens. It's there is a lot of politics in the in the sports organizations in the country so if you are on the wrong side of the of the Federation as an athlete your name will never get pushed and in that regard there have been a couple of names which have been which is I mean which makes me happy that they have finally got their due in this year's list and they got their due because there was a slight change in the procedure this time around apart from the Federation's nominations this year because of pandemic and the restrictions that it brought out. Self nominations were allowed so many athletes push their own applications themselves and so a couple of them come to my mind immediately one is Sivakesh when the Winter Olympian he is listed for as you know about this year his prime was around 10 years back where he was Asian champion and he has been an Olympian on multiple occasions and on multiple occasions the only athlete to compete in Winter Olympics from India that so he's pretty famous in the Winter Olympics world but not exactly a household name in India and he always had problems with the Federation he always used to call them out for lack of support and lack of initiatives to improve the stature of the of winter sport in the country considering that we are blessed with some amazing resorts and skiing slopes and it's a surprise that India doesn't produce enough Winter Olympics so H.S. Pranoy is another named badminton player he has been fighting to for the you know for a while and he also has been this so that's the market difference that has happened this year compared to last year self nominations. So in this context the key question that comes is that like you pointed out sports is at the end of the day it's a really there's a lot of politics happening around and awards are often are at the time when a lot of this politics comes out and a lot of this politics is into play so are there any kind of same mechanisms to ensure say some of these issues can be resolved or some of these issues can be streamlined better so that athletes get more say athletes get recognized more easily and that is maybe less politics or the one that's one one question and on the other hand does it look like this kind of say jumbo award system is likely to stay or will it is it likely to be a one-year exception? It's I mean that's that's a I mean the second question is is subjective that way because we can't speculate whether this president would continue in the coming years it's been set and obviously there would be expectations they would be pushing and they would be cribbing and crying so that has happened this year as well for instance our Olympic medalist from last Games Sakshi Malik and she won the Kail Ratna for her Olympic bronze medal in 2016 and that's the highest I have ever compared to Arjuna and then she applied for Arjuna this year and it's it's a little I mean it's difficult to understand why she applied this year as well because she has been on the downwards slide ever since the last games and this year she even lost in the national finals so but any case she applied Mirabai Chanu applied both of them were Kail Ratna awardees on previous occasions and both of them were initially there in the short list so initially it was 29 Arjuna awards apparently and then when the final list was published approved they excluded these two and yesterday Sakshi has written a letter to PM and the sports minister saying that what should I do to get this award so it's so these kind of I mean every year when the awards come there is a lot of you and cry has to be deserved it people are people who are undeserving gets get it and people who deserve don't get it so that happens I guess in all the I mean it doesn't happen in any of the other awards I guess if you consider the Padma awards or any of any of those instituted awards by the by the government so here it happens because there is a lot of subjectivity in the process and there is a lot of loopholes which is exploited by people who have connections within the network people who are politically savvy let's let's put it that way at least who are politically savvy so how do you counter that that answers your first question how do you streamline the system it's I mean it's India we're talking about and it's very difficult to take that part out of it because at some level these things are bound to happen the best way to go about it is probably to completely do away with the nomination I mean this is this is just a just an idea that way completely do away with the nominations the criterias are already there let the jury or the let the committee that is convened every year decide on a shortlist based on the performance see performances are out there you don't have to be nominated to understand who did what in the sporting world for India because our performances it's not like we are the top most sporting country in the and we have 600 700 athletes to pick from so decide on a shortlist and from there deliberate and bring out with the avoid the nomination process altogether let the power to shortlist the nominees a shortlist shortlist athletes for the awards rest completely on the committee every year and let empower the committee fully and oversee that with the with the rule book and implement it it requires implementation rule books are the rule book is pretty straightforward and it's it's set properly it's just that the implement implementation factor remains ambiguous and this nomination procedure I believe it began at the early stages 60s Ajuna awards started so at that point I guess to push at least you required some kind of nomination because unlike these days information and information about performances and all that was not out in the open and in public domain or in social media or in instagram so I deliberately said instagram because there is a joke during the rounds that some of the awardees are those who did instagram live with with the sports minister so that's a joke but yeah so so everything is out there so why not why not do that in a direct fashion like like some of the other awards that we see where the nomination is done by the by the by the committee themselves and not by any extent that that at least cuts off 50% of the politics that could be played of course some element would still remain but that's that imperfection will remain in indian sport thank you let's keep talking to us in our next segment we bring you a series of conversations on new rules that are being framed for digital trade by rich and powerful countries in the world trade organization and in freeze brings you more details while most countries are focused on coping with cobit 19 and its aftermath some rich countries are pursuing an expansionist free trade agenda at the world trade organization one example of this is an effort underway to establish new rules globally for digital trade digital trade rules a disastrous new constitution for the global economy by and for big tech authored by debora james was the topic of a recent book launch and webinar this report features highlights of some key points contributed by debora james at that webinar we go now to our featured clips thank you so much to the Rosa Lucknerberg shifting for publishing the paper and for organizing this seminar and to roll on and to all of my excellent co-panelists welcome everyone thank you for being here today just to say our world is not for sale is a global network of about 250 groups from the global north and south from about 50 different countries and we oppose the current model of corporate globalization and we work together for a democratic sustainable and fair multilateral trading system so today i'm going to share with you three major points we're here to talk about the digital trade rules that the big tech corporations are pushing in the wto and another forum so i'm going to talk about the origin of the talks why are we having this discussion i'll give you a brief status update and then i'm going to focus on the implication of the rules so a couple of basic points technology obviously can stimulate prosperity and development it can bring us closer together and help build sustainable livelihoods we are not anti-technology but it can also constrain development it can exacerbate inequalities and it can destroy jobs and ways of life so whether countries workers and consumers everywhere will benefit from new technology or whether the benefits will only accrue to a teeny tiny minority will be determined by the rules which set the playing field for how digitalization will evolve over time and the important point is who is setting those rules now one of the best investments that corporations can make is to change the rules under which they operate so that they can extract greater profits from the economy while preventing their competitors from having a level playing field now powerful corporations have long used their surplus profits to invest in the undemocratic practice of trade policy making to use trade agreements to lock in rules promoting their rights to make profits while limiting government's ability to regulate them in the public interest often through policies that they could not have advanced through democratic channel the world trade organization as we know is the global rulemaking body on international trade big tech and other corporations operating and transport logistics telecoms finance agribusiness industrial many other sectors our lobbying governments to use the WTO to liberalize the digitalization that is currently transforming the global economy and particularly the governance of today's most valuable resource which is data so what's a quick status update well in 2016 the Obama administration first proposed rules on digital trade in the WTO after hiring a corporate tech lobbyist under the guise of e-commerce talks in the WTO proponents tried to get all 164 members to agree to a new mandate to negotiate binding rules on digital trade and to permanently push aside the development agenda which has been pending since 1995 okay but developing countries resisted the imposition of this new corporate agenda and they blocked the new mandate at the last WTO ministerial which was in Buenos Aires in December 2017 however a group of 76 countries launched talks among themselves to bring about a binding agreement on digital trade in the WTO now these nations are constantly lobbying and pressuring other developing countries that are not participating also to join their ranks their aim is to conclude an agreement involving as many countries as possible as well as to secure a mandate for talks among members of the WTO all the members by the time of the next ministerial conference so that was supposed to occur last month but it's been postponed at this time now one of the characteristics of the contemporary global economy is that while the productivity of workers and small businesses has increased over time obviously large corporations continually take more and more than their share as i mentioned they have used their surplus profits to intervene in the policymaking process to design the market to distribute more of the gains to themselves now this process has been facilitated by digitalization and the proposed rules are intended to lock in and accelerate that appropriation of the productivity of workers so in reality big tech has proposed the rules in order to consolidate its exploitative business model so what does it include it includes gaining rights to access markets globally they want to be around the world they want to lock in deregulation and they want to invade and prevent future regulation they want to access an unlimited supply of cheap labor that has been stripped of its rights they want to expand their power through monopolies they want to avoid payment of taxes and now the newest aspect they want to be able to extract and control personal social and business data around the world data is the lifeblood of the digital economy so whichever firms dominate artificial intelligence in their sectors by virtue of their big data set will dominate their industries about the fact that us-based big tech transnational corporations google apple facebook amazon and microsoft are now five of the six largest corporations in the world now the proponents are disguising their proposals in the trojan horse is being able to unleash development through the power of micro small and medium enterprises using e-commerce these are not e-commerce rules they go far beyond e-commerce and would result in the liberalization of all aspects of the economy they really represent a new constitution binding global rules on the entire digital economy written by big tech for its own benefit now these rules were already in the trans-specific partnership so it's in the tpp they also currently exist in the u uh japan uh fta and the us-japan fta and in the renegotiated nafta of the so-called us-mexico-canada agreement so if your country is a member of the trans-specific partnership you already have these rules if you're part of us mca if you are e-u with japan you already have them but that doesn't mean that they have to be exported to the whole world because they are much harder to change if they are agreed in the wto between the e-u and japan you can change it when you finally decide that it makes no sense for your countries but we need to not happen in the wto we need to make a change and we need to make sure that our activities that we're advocating for if they're economic justice racial justice you know data privacy whatever that they include also paying attention to the rules that are being developed globally and we have uh lots of room for growth within our world is not for sale for more groups to join to participate in this fight we need to make a change and we need to get the rules that we need worker rights more taxation anti-monopoly and stop them from implementing the rules that they want which will really have such a devastating impact on our lives for the future because once you get these rules in the wto forget ever changing them that is the problem that's all we have time for today we'll be back tomorrow with major news developments from the country until then keep watching 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