Indo Pak Sports Are Not What They Used To Be …

‘Indo-Pak duels have lost intensity

“The Pakistan table tennis great, who at one time, during the 80s, was among the top 60 in the ITTF world ranking list, is here … concerned at the fast diminishing intensity of India-Pakistan sporting contests.
“It’s no more the same. The intensity is totally missing these days. Perhaps we are playing each other too often now. But at what cost?” he wonders.”

Not low achievement, but low standards …

This is good news. India is growing up.

In economic development, India sets the bar at the level of China. In cricket, India benchmark’s is Australia, the world champions. In ’soft power’, the benchmark is the USA.

2 decades ago, a director of Xerox India faulted Indian industry. His view was that Indian industry should make cheap, even low quality products for export. To buttress his argument, he used the Japanese as the example. His contention was that in the 1950s and 1960s, the Japanese, exported products which were basically cheap. And look at where Japan is today, was his clinching argument. Not a bad argument, considering that the Koreans, the Asian Tigers, and now the Chinese are following that strategy.

Indians then, or now, did not agree with this approach. Critics may of course, point out that Indian exports are based on low cost platform – which is strictly not true. It is based on platforms, that competitors cannot emulate. Indian exports are also cost-effective, is a co-incidence.