 Hello and welcome to Daily Debrief, your primer on news from around the world. I'm Swastika and today we'll be talking about the latest Sipri report on global arms sale, developments in US and China and the anniversary of the demolition of a mosque in India. We begin with the global arms trade. 2020 was by all accounts a horrible year for billions of people around the world. But one small section seems to have had a good time, arms traders. The latest report by the Stock Home International Peace Research Institute that is Sipri says that global arms trade rose by 1.3% in 2020, a year when so many countries including leading economies saw a decline in their GDP growth. Now arms trade by the world's top 100 companies in the sector touched $531 billion in the year 2020, making it the sixth consecutive year of growth since 2015. Now to tell us more about this we have with us Abdul. Abdul if you could take us through some of the highlights of the Sipri report. So I think we should start with this what is not there in the report. If you see this is only the aggregate amount of 100 top countries sorry 100 top weapon manufacturers. There are more companies which are involved in the arms trade, arm manufacturing and trade. Their figures are not included in it. So $531 billion is a conservative figure by all means. That is the first thing I wanted to highlight. So that is the second thing is if you see the dominance of US out of 100 companies listed in this report 41 belong to the United States of America alone. And they have more than half of the share of the total amount which comes from the arms trade globally which is $285 billion. So that is the second point I wanted to highlight. The third of course is that the gap between the United States of America and the second largest group of you can say companies or a country which is China which has a share of just 13% US alone has a share of 54% one country. The other major fact about the Sipri report is that among all the arms traders in the world which basically which we saw last year there are there is a strange thing some of the companies have civilian kind of involvement say for example Boeing in US which also produces aircrafts, aeroplanes for civilian use. Their civilian business went down due to the COVID as you rightly pointed out and economic crisis created by the COVID. But their arms trade remained intact. In fact it increased Boeing recorded more than 10% increase in its weapon trade last year. So these are the major factors which basically highlight that the the the governments around the world focus more may have remained adamant on spending so-called security and defense despite the fact that the people needed more spending on other basic needs like health and education and so on and so forth. In the year 2020 health. I also want to ask you who were the buyers in which case? Yeah see if you see most the majority of the trade happened within the state for example the US government is the largest buyer when it comes to the US companies but apart from that there are international buyers also. So say for example the countries in the Middle East or what we call West Asia like Saudi Arabia remains to be one of the largest arms buyers in the world UAE again the same set of countries then countries like India Israel for example has just the it's a small country but the three companies which are listed in top 100 globe in the ship pre-list they had a trade of around 10 billion dollars and majority of this went to they went to India basically Indian companies there surprisingly there are three Indian companies the top 100 list and they have performed really well given the fact that Indian economy contracted more than 7% last year. So you see all these things one major fact about this report is that UK for example which is among all these countries had the highest contraction in terms of GDP growth last year which was around 10% 9.9 10% this UK is now the third largest in terms of countries third individual countries third largest share in the global trade now and most of its weapons are going weapons are going to the the West Asian countries like the war in Yemen for example which basically has is seen as a lucrative business for countries like UK companies based in UK or companies based in states of America. Thank you thank you for that update Abdul our next story is something we have been tracking for a while US-China tensions the United States has formally announced the diplomatic boycott of Beijing winter Olympics which will be held in 2022. The Joe Biden administration claimed that this was to protest China's alleged human rights abuses and atrocities in Zhijiang. A Chinese diplomat said it was a grave distortion of the spirit of the Olympic charter and also pointed out that it was a pretentious act and that new invitation had been extended anyway to any US diplomat. Now to tell us more about this I'm being joined by Anish. Anish if you could tell us Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping had in fact had a virtual meeting earlier earlier on and now there is this talk of the boycott. So how does this play out in terms of US-China relationship it is the is it a usual noise making by USA? Well I like the way that you said noise making because it is obviously an attempt to ruffle the feathers on the part of the United States and it has been kind of doing that with the past year or so even after Biden has come to power the policy has not kind of changed in radically from what Trump was doing when it comes to China you know. So as you said like the virtual meeting happened just last month and there was a joint declaration it was seen as a step forward a small step but a step forward towards thawing of relations but as we see this was kind of reckless because on the part of the United States because as they pointed out diplomats were not given invitation you don't really hear of diplomats attending these events either as in their official capacities. At the same time we need to remember this talk of boycott has been happening for a while now in the United States. Earlier it was the Peng Shua case where we saw what happened where the player was at one point even claimed by many US reporters or even like athletic bodies as to have been disappeared but she did contact the Olympics committee she did contact the tennis federation but none of these cases you actually had you saw the sort of narrative that was built around her issue her case pretty much falling apart when you actually started to when the international media started to get more reports and more details about the matter and at that point there was this whole push towards boycotting Beijing Winter Olympics trying to make a statement of their own that did not work out so Xinjiang which has been kind of like an issue that they have been raking up every now and again was brought up again to do the stunt this sort of diplomatic stunt and it is actually like whatever little headway we had when it came to normalizing I'm not I'm not going to say normalize because it wasn't that tense but it was a very tense-dub relationship considering what happened during the Trump administration so trying to mend those you know bridges did not really is going to be is going to be much more difficult now considering what they did and this will also affect whatever future talks we are going to see between the two countries and this affects everybody it's not just the US and China it affects everybody and that's that's exactly what we saw during the trade was it pretty much affected almost the entire world because of how big they are economically speaking and how much they are you know how significant they are in their respective sectors in fact it does bring me about keeping in line with the US China tension the way in which USA is encircling China it's a dangerous consequence of this tension if you could tell us more about that yeah so we can actually see that sort of escalation which began obviously under the Trump administration being continued by the Biden administration in many ways even though they keep talking about having talks and negotiations there doesn't seem to be any attempt or any serious attempt at the side of the United States to actually make any kind of concession or actually make any gesture that will show that they are serious about going following through the talks or whatever has been agreed in the talks you know one of the things that we can see is the obviously apart from this boycott call is their attempt to have a summit of democracies now which is trying to bring about any almost any other nation that has any kind of political or diplomatic antagonism or tensions with China and that and many of these countries even though they are you know on paper democracies they are pretty much led by right wing or reactionary leaders so this sort of farce that they're trying to make as trying to lead a democratic world is something that hugs back to cold war era policies that we are very familiar with when it came to going against the United States trying to project some of its allies or you know client states as democracies or you know forward looking places because they were not for socialism so this is going to have a significant impact again diplomatically speaking at the same time we have to remember that the and the physical encirclement of China is already there the United States Pacific basis is one of the is among its biggest actually and if you look at it Korea it has a huge base in Korea thousands of troops stationed there has a huge base in Japan troops even weapons like very high-grade weapons and missiles are stationed there and apart from that smaller bases in the Pacific ocean along the South China Sea and this is pretty much already this is something that already exists and this is something that cannot be discounted when we talk about encirclement policies especially when we talk look at a UK US alliance that is being talked about where you know which is a very outright military alliance that is our coalition that is being made up you know of and in this case this sort of diplomatic boycott doesn't really shouldn't really surprise us but it is something that is very disappointing to see because any attempt there were at least attempts by social movements in the United States to try to mend those relations that were strained for a long for a while now and this training can actually we can expect it to continue because the Olympics is coming up in February the players will be there US players are still going to participate it's not like the players are not it is not going to be part of the Olympics coming ceremony but at the same time just this gesture is going to have significant impact and that makes it obvious of how provocative the US is ready to be when it comes to countries like China and not just China but other countries like Russia, Iran and so on. Thank you Inish for those insights and joining us on our show. Moving on to our next story December 6th was the anniversary of the demolition of a mosque the Babri Masjid in India in the year 1992 after decades of controversies and disputes and after a violent mobilization in that year members of various Hindu right-wing organizations destroyed the mosque their claim was the mosque which was built in the 16th century was constructed on top of the site of a temple now in the decades following the demolition a prolonged legal process took place and what eventually happened was that permission was given to build a temple on that disputed site to understand what this demolition meant and where it stands today we have with us news clicks Pranjal to talk to us more about now Pranjal if you could tell us how do you see the legacy of the Babri Masjid demolition? So Swastika it's an interesting question what's the legacy of Babri Masjid demolition you also will have to link it to what is the legacy of the ruling Bhati Janta party and I think both are very interlinked topics so we can come to the legacy of BJP later but what Babri Masjid demolition was it was a attack on the Indian constitution the basic ethos of the constitution which stands for secularism was destroyed on that day when thousands of people gathered in Ayodhya demolished the mosque in presence of police policemen standing there and the ruling the current ruling parties active members were involved in that what we also to understand what followed Babri Masjid demolition Babri Masjid demolition was followed by massive rights all over India before the demolition rights took place after the demolition rights took place thousands of people lost their lives it also laid foundation for Bhati Janta party before the demolition took place BJP was a non-existence force in the country they had very little number of member of parliaments they had no electoral presence what the Babri Masjid demolition and the Yatra that preceded it resulted in establishing BJP as a major opposition force in the country at that time but it also led to a very interesting phenomena it led to division of the society before before 1992 I mean India has been a Hindu dominated nation where Muslims are the minority but it was not so visible before 1992 what BJP did was it brought to fore this entire issue of Hindu and Muslim divide and what it resulted in massive communalization of the society so easily people could identify with either the Ram temple movement or the Babri Masjid then that type of division took place in the society and that what that's what helped the BJP in ensuring that it consolidates its vote ban so after 1992 elections I mean 1992 demolition they got more and more number of seats in UP they were able to form government in 1998 and 1999 so this is what happened this is the legacy in my understanding legacy of Babri Masjid demolition. Pranjal actually it has a far reaching impact in today's India as well because this is the party that is ruling the country and also the rise of the right-wing forces that have happened in this country and many hate crimes that have now emerged if you could tell us more about this keeping in mind the impact of demolition so what's happening right now is that the ruling it's a BJP which is the ruling party right now and they have consolidated their position vis-a-vis the north Indian states north Indian states it was Uttar Pradesh where the demolition took place it was UP which also has the maximum number of seats in the parliament so if you see the agenda of BJP right now it's again and again talking about how a grand Ram temple will be built they don't have any other issue to talk about so they are continuously banking on the demolition and then construction of Ram temple as a as a agenda for their election manifesto each of their leaders are talking about how a grand temple will be built and then what's the other thing they do they attack the minority community saying that it was when the opposition the current opposition samajwadi party when it was in power the and they don't directly refer to them as Muslims they say that people who wore skull caps people who wore lungis ran havoc in the society so this is what they keep referring to as a minority and this continuous eroding the citizenship of a minority is happening by the ruling party in the current sphere right now and interestingly what they're doing right now is also that along with the Babri Masjid demolition their slogan was that Ayodhya is just a glimpse Kashi and Mathura remain what are they doing now they're saying that we will go and we will do we'll construct a similar temple in Mathura so they have not left that issue Babri Masjid might be over Ram temple might be being constructed but they don't have any other issue to talk about and hence their entire focus now has shifted to Mathura well thank you Pranjil for joining us with these details in fact this very state is ranked third in the poverty index in one of the important reports of Niti Ayog in the country and I had one of the maximum number of covid deaths in the second phase you could see the bodies of people lying on lying on the river shores uncovered lying there and there was nobody willing to talk about it one interesting thing that I missed that the 32 key BJP Hindu outfit outfit leaders who were basically accused in the case for let go last year to if I am not on 2020 yes so all of them have been acquitted by the lower court now it will go to the higher court and supreme courts we don't know but basically even in the supreme court judgment that they passed on construction of the temple they said that demolition of that mosque was unconstitutional in nature and criminal in nature so when that supreme court has said that it was criminal in nature somebody would have done it who has done it the court has not given us answers to well thank you for all the details there Pranjil that's all that we have here at daily debrief do keep watching us and do follow us on people's dispatch our stories and our news thank you