 Hello and let's talk about the global COVID-19 situation. On Sunday, the World Health Organization reported the single largest increase in the number of cases worldwide for one day. This is even as the three top countries contributing to this increase, that's Brazil, the United States and India, are in deep confusion or even in denial regarding the spread of the disease. Meanwhile, other countries are dealing with new outbreaks, raising larger questions on what is a sustainable strategy to control and limit the spread of the disease. We'll talk about this more, but here are the details. According to a WHO update on Sunday, over 183,000 cases were reported in the previous 24 hours. Brazil reported nearly 55,000 cases. The US came second with over 36,000 cases and India reported close to 15,500 cases. In terms of the total number of cases, as of today afternoon, the worldwide number is close to 9 million with over 468,000 deaths. The US has over 2.2 million cases while Brazil is over 1 million. Russia, India and Peru are next on the list. In terms of deaths, the US has close to 120,000 deaths while as Brazil is reported over 50,000. The UK has reported 42,000 deaths and India has reported close to 13,700 as of today morning. 445 deaths were reported in India in the preceding 24 hours. China and South Korea among the countries reporting new rounds of infections. The Chinese capital city of Beijing saw a fresh wave in the second week of June, but authorities say they are expecting to see a sharp drop in the number in a day or two. According to Al Jazeera, 236 cases have been reported from the capital so far. South Korea too has been reporting cases in the dozens, mainly in and around the capital Seoul. Germany too reported over 500 cases yesterday. In order to discuss some of these issues, we talked in the newsflakes Prabir Pulkastar. Here is what he had to say. Thank you Prabir. China continues to be a spike in cases, although in many countries this may no longer be the main subject of discussion. We have seen that the United States, as Trump is doing in India, it has moved in some other direction. But nonetheless, the fact is that COVID-19 is very much in the centre of our day-to-day life and yesterday's case numbers prove that. So especially when you take the top three countries, that's Brazil, India and the United States, how do we see the way these countries are handling this crisis? Well, you know, of course the cases will shift from country to country, continent to continent as you go along. So I think the first was China, the second in that sense was the European Union, what I would call the core European Union countries, which are also very well connected amongst each other. If one goes up, so do the others and then of course the United Kingdom also being closely connected. So that set of countries and of course then you have the United States, very close again to European Union in terms of connections, people flying back and forth. And then now you have the Latin America, so what I would call the Americas. They have taken over and as is India. So you have shifting locations of the epidemic. And that's the nature of the pandemic because it's not the virus which is transmitted automatically. It's really people transmitting the virus. So it's a contact between people, the density of the population, how people were infected, are separated from others or not. All of that really determines the nature of the epidemic and it's very clear that countries like Brazil and countries like the United States really stumbled badly. The US because it failed in its initial phase, the CDC tests failed, so they're trying to blame China for not telling them one week before or something like that. The point remains that they had almost one and a half months in which to scale up at least the possibility of testing and WHO is applying test kits to all other countries. So it's very surprising that the US stumbled on that. But also the fact that Trump and Bolsonaro both had a common attitude to the virus. Then Trump got convinced that he needs to take more responsibility and started saying yes of course we are controlling it, we are the best, we have the best tests, we have the best systems and everything. And then when it finds that he's really not able to do it, now his position is it's a state's problem, it's not our problem. And now we should really reopen the economy. His skepticism regarding the pandemic, the COVID-19 epidemic seems to have come back in some form or the other and then saying the economy matters more than the pandemic and this is what we do and at the end of it it's really also about his elections. So what matters to him for the elections? The reality is that we have this two right wing, what shall I call them, chauvinist shall we say national chauvinists, national supremacists in some sense internally, also extremely right wing and in the case of Trump close to white supremacy and so is Bolsonaro. And then of course we have the case of India which had a very draconian lockdown. So not that the lockdown wasn't there, the lockdown was definitely there and it was a lockdown which was in terms of the scale of the lockdown was quite severe. So what is it that makes India come to the same scale as others? And we have discussed it in India, in fact the failure has been to treat it as a life normal problem and use sticks where you need public health measures. So looking at it is also the vision of the Modi government, another right wing government, another one who wanted to blame the minorities for even the COVID-19 initially tried to stigmatize a group of people on that count. And also the fact that it has sort of now decided having lost grip of the epidemic, having now shifted the blame entirely to the state only what Trump is doing. So you see a commonality of all of this but the underlying issue is that it is a public health disaster that is in the making, particularly in the countries which are unable to control it and I would now have to put India also in that camp because it appeared that India was cheatering on the brink for quite some time. We have discussed it a number of times, it's a touch and go, it's not very good situation. The numbers are going up, there's really no control over it as it is being claimed and now it's very clear that yesterday I think we have 15,000 numbers. We are going up very steadily and as you can see of course we are behind the United States, Brazil and Russia but in terms of new infections we are number three and the number of deaths also, deaths per day, the last 24 hours of deaths, again we are number three. Well Russia the absolute numbers are higher, total numbers are higher but the number of infections are slowly coming down. So I'm going to come down very quickly, that's very clear, unless you do something like the Chinese who are successful in doing, most countries have come down slowly and Russia is on that track, so is Iran on that track, the blips aside. So what you are likely to see is Brazil certainly not in any control, Latin America varying degrees of India shall we say, that means losing control of the epidemic and daily figures are continuing to rise. India we have seen daily figures started with 8,000, 7,000, 8,000, 10,000, 12,000, now we have reached 15,000 per day and what happens is two weeks later then you see the death count goes high because these are the people then who becomes very sick, some of them and then of course some of them will die. So it's a cascading effect that we have seen and the fact that we are not in control of it is very worrying for all the three reasons I talked about the United States, America's and now South Asia. Pakistan is not too far behind in terms of per capita number of cases, it's very closely following on India's heels, so I think this is the South Asian problem that we are also going to get, but these numbers are also rising and I think one thing is now very clear that this is not related to the climate, that means hot season is not going to make a significant difference because India, it is summer at the moment, we are seeing temperatures above 40 degrees in North India consistently, so it's very clear that the climate may reduce or increase transmission by some amount, the primary transmission vectors are human beings and it is that contact that really decides the nature of the epidemic and unless we have a vaccine I don't think we are going to be at the moment going to be able to control it, not with the policies we have and not the way a lot of the countries are going. The fact that we have learned from Chinese experience, we have learned from the European Union, particularly Germany did, which managed to keep its death count very low, similarly Russia, high infections but death count low because they really had good hospital facilities for taking care of those who really become sick. So all of those lessons if we don't take and it doesn't look like we are taking those lessons either in Brazil, India, rest of the Americas and of course the United States of America itself where the death count is high. So we are seeing all of this shows that what WHO is saying, what everybody is saying, that we are going to see this continuing of the pandemic at least for the next six months if we don't you know drastically alter the way we look at the pandemic itself, look at it as a public health issue and control it as any public health response should be. And another key issue which of course has a lot of experts also worried is the fact that both China and South Korea reported, I don't know if it's right to call it a fresh wave of cases but at least China had a lot of cases in Beijing, South Korea reporting quite a few in Seoul. Both countries are good examples of how to tackle the disease and they seem to have managed to handle it quite well but it does show that even if the curve is flattened for a while there's always the possibility that again cases might emerge again. Yeah you know it's very simple that spikes will take place because you're not stopping all global movement so people will come from outside and the genomic analysis of the virus that's infected the people in Beijing seems to show it came from Europe that means somebody coming back from Europe somebody or a foreigner whatever it is did bring the virus in he may have been completely asymptomatic infected one or two people from which it spread and South Korea is similarly connected to various places and that's the most likely source of the of new infections but once it comes in and assuming that it continuously will unless you decide to cut yourself off completely from the work then it will come in the question is do you have the trip wires and do you have the quick mechanisms to control it and both China and South Korea have it they're not the only ones it's also true that Cuba has controlled it Vietnam has controlled it and looking in Southeast Asia both Thailand and Malaysia have controlled it and they're not countries which can be accused of being either highly developed and you know part of the elite countries of the world they are countries like India and Pakistan for instance and Iran though went through a rather difficult phase has also seemed to have controlled it better than they round the case curve is quite flat and they seem to have done it better than for instance for the European Union country state if you look into figures so behind all of this is an attitude to the epidemic itself that the epidemic is not a public health issue is a law and order issue and the other part of it that if we fail if we control we get the credit if we fail and this is true in Modi's case in Trump's case as well then let's distract the people distract the people with various things India at the moment we have a I'm not going to say this is because of the crisis of the pandemic but we have a issue with China on the border which has since old the skin let's focus on that okay so that this issue then goes to the background and both Trump and both you have the common idea that let's blame the state governments and say it's not our headache because the states are supposed to do everything so the credit is to be if we fail that the discredit is to them it's a kind of head I didn't tell you lose approach that Modi and Trump seem to be taking but the essential part of it the pandemic is not going to go away and irrespective of what the government do the governments do or don't do the point is you can see the fear in the people and the fact that the hospitals are getting overcrowded facilities are not available you can slowly see how irrespective of the lockdown being lifted or not you already see that the effect of the people is on there so it's not a question of just a policing lockdown a lockdown one two as Modi government is saying or whatever Trump is saying it's also the social discourse already has factored in there is an epidemic and there is an impact and it's going to affect the economies as well so if you don't address the pandemic I do not think ideas that you will open the economy by itself in world you need to really do both and the fact that the governments seem to be doing an either or approach and of course sacrificing the poor helping the rich that's the other part of all of these three governments we are talking about which today head the covid list in terms of new infections and death I think this is the key issue that we need to address thank you so much for being in our next segment we look at the sporting world in the context of ongoing tensions with China over the past few weeks there have been all sorts of calls for a so-called commercial retaliation against China and the sporting world has not been immune but does this really make sense we talked in news clicks Leslie Xavier to find out thank you Leslie for speaking to us so we have seen over the past couple of weeks there's been a lot of jingoism there's been a lot of talk especially the TV channels about boycotting in China and you know taking a step against China and the commercial sector now many experts have pointed out that this is in fact not really feasible the economic relations between India and China are very very strong and actually are in some sense in China's favour so if something like that were to happen India would suffer but in the field of sports how do we how is this whole issue playing out especially because sports is a lot of talk about and then there's a lot of there's a narrative about what do you call solidarity there's a narrative about internationalism here also it's a space for a lot of jingoism so how is it playing out speed response it's like those like that common relationship status that people put up on social media it's complicated so let's start with cricket so suddenly out of the blue last friday it was DCC I tweeted out saying that they will have a ICC governing council meeting this coming week this week on the trying to decide on the fate of IPL's main sponsor the title sponsor which is Vivo the mobile manufacturer of chinese brand and the the BCCI in itself is sponsored the biggest sponsor one of the biggest sponsors is PATM which as a Alibaba group has a majority stake in that around 30 33 percent or something so they are trying to focus on the IPL bit because that's the that's the that's the question because on social media and it all stems from not by policy decisions and all that but or economic thought put into it but from from the clamoring that happens on social media and generally the jingoism that's doing the round with the incident happening in the border so they will I mean I don't know the because the contract runs till 2022 and if they if they want to get rid of Vivo then they have to break contract that means a financial loss and also the basic understanding of our sponsorship deal works seems to be lacking especially in the higher among the higher officials of DCC because the BCCI treasurer himself no less was was quoted by media as saying that we are doing the economy a favor by letting Vivo sponsor us because they are paying money it's not like we are paying the money but they don't understand the idea of business that it's it's it's a deal where both parties are involved to gain something out of it otherwise why would why would a brand put in money to sponsor sponsor again so that's that's cricket's part so it's it's a meaningless meeting I would say because the intricacies of sponsorship in sport and especially when economy is going on a slide and to sustain such sponsorship in the in the near future would be very difficult for these brands and so and and for the sporting entities to get more sponsors out there would be very difficult at this point if you buy by women and fancies and by jingoistic emotions if you go about cutting and severing ties that's that's not going to help Indian sport at all and so that is cricket's part and Indian Olympic Association's main sponsor is leaning which is Chinese sports goods manufacturer so specifically the the company's focus area has been badminton but but they also make jerseys and all that which has been used by the national teams of various court so again ios come on record saying that they will look at the sponsorship deal after they get a directive from the government of course the government won't take any directive they are playing behind the scenes as usual because they can't possibly take a give a direction that we should cut all these sponsorship ties because that doesn't make any economic sense at all but then again we're talking about a bunch of people who have made decisions which sometimes make no sense at all but yeah uh so if you cut it it's it's not just about the national teams that suffer because leaning's equipment is being used by a lot of academies say for instance the gopijand academy which which nurtures a lot of younger younger players so so so how do you how do you go about it their equipment supply their uh uh i mean playing surface suppliers everything goes out of the window and then where would they turn to obviously there's no system in place domestically to manufacture these equipments at the level that that is required for them to play and bring up bring up their game you are not talking about recreational players here right you are talking about players who are developing and going up there to fight the world so so these two cases i will clearly point at the futility of of of such a move if at all such a move has been adopted by two of the biggest sporting bodies in the country right and simultaneously the question would be that does this even make sense from uh from the angle of sport from which we've been talking about for the past couple of weeks of seeing sport as something that is not constrained by narrow ideas of patriotism and also something that can actually help help build bridges promote better relations so should sport in the first place even be brought into this kind of a narrative so to speak the idea of organized sport uh and any any any sporting endeavor for that matter it it revolves around sport being not constrained by boundaries by borders so the olympic ideal it's it's all about you universality of sports and so and over the course of years and be uh be it because of the sporting action and the kind of competitions that have been i mean set up over the years or be it the business model of sport everything is intricately connected so uh to cut off one country and and this is no ordinary country that you're talking about a major player in in sport not just in the industry but also in performance sport because uh china comes right up there as far as the olympic medal style you're concerned and they are the biggest sporting nation in in in asia and in the world one of the biggest in the world so on that regard itself it's it's so uh you're talking about banning chinese equipment right let's talk about that so then you need our players need replacement so one couple of uh specific instances i can i can narrate here just to prove that point one is table tennis so i mean you know table tennis is a sport that is uh i mean dominated by southeast i mean east very east countries china korea and all these nations coming from southeast asia so uh beyond that dominance the equipment equipment that is used for table tennis the biggest manufacturers are from china and if you look at the world tour and the world championship the balls that are provided for these players to play is made by a chinese manufacturer and there are only three players uh three big brands which which manufacturer balls for for table tennis and all three i mean one is a swedish brand uh one is a indian brand and the other one is uh you must have come across that name that is the indian brand we are talking about which also makes table tennis tables and the uh the point is all the other brands are also manufactured in china the manufacturing happens in china so for our players the elite players or the youngsters to play and get used to the bounds and the specific characteristics of this particular brand of ball that is used for all the competitions across the world they need to train with it so if you completely cut off and take away that facility from our players then how will our players develop so that is that is just one aspect of one small specific game let's talk about cricket and the manufacturing that happens so india has a slight monopoly as far as manufacturing cricket bats i mean we have a couple of brands which which which are extensively used by cricketers worldwide sg being the prominent of it sg balls are being used when india plays at home and the bats the test bat that sg manufactures and that's mirrored base the company's mirrored base but uh beyond that when you look at equipment manufacturing there was a point when india was big in manufacturing uh footballs but then we have lost out to even our neighboring country pakistan initially and then to china and vietnam and taiwan because the cost of production they have they have made it and it's it's they have made it in such a efficient setup that they have these countries have been able to bring down the cost of production and also maintain that quality that is required for for for these these manufacturers so uh nike for instance they make their football exclusively in china and vietnam and uh we have our indigenous manufacturers like nivea or wax uh but uh these manufacturers also and it has been reported reported in the media the uh raw materials that is used for manufacturing the molded ball which is the most modern iteration of the football right it it is important from china because because it's readily available there and it also makes business sense for them to import it from china rather than trying to set up a manufacturing system in this country so system is the key word here so when you talk about a jingoistic jingoistic narrative where we'll shut out uh a a country completely a country which has been providing us a lot of things not just a not just finished products but uh raw materials with which our manufacturing systems work make in india works with with raw materials that is that has been important imported from china and from other countries as well but predominantly from china so there is no system in place to ensure that these companies companies can effectively make quality products in india and also uh there is a system in place for to help these industries to come up come up in a uh indian sport manufacturing india industry has been in a long decay and and no measures have been taken by the government to to to show up their their systems and their uh effectiveness so that so that they are strong enough to pose a challenge to imports it's not happened and now with lockdown things have gotten much more bleak so sporting action is not happening and i mentioned sg earlier which manufactures cricket manufacturers cricket bats with cricket not happening cricket ball is not in demand so these companies are shut so so then even even in areas even in sporting manufacturing where we add some semblance of monopoly that is those industries are also struggling and now we are talking about setting things up from scratch in in areas where we have no standing at all at present and it's it's it's it's pointless pointless is the blunt and the right uh way to put it thank you so much let's do the talking to us that's all we have in this episode let's talk we'll be back tomorrow with the latest news developments the day until then keep watching news click