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By:

Bhalchandra Chorghade

11 August 2025 at 1:54:18 pm

Applause for Cricket, Silence for Badminton

Mumbai: When Lakshya Sen walked off the court after the final of the All England Badminton Championships, he carried with him the disappointment of another near miss. The Indian shuttler went down in straight games to Lin Chun-Yi, who created history by becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the prestigious title. But the story of Lakshya Sen’s defeat is not merely about badminton final. It is also about the contrasting way India celebrates its sporting heroes. Had the same...

Applause for Cricket, Silence for Badminton

Mumbai: When Lakshya Sen walked off the court after the final of the All England Badminton Championships, he carried with him the disappointment of another near miss. The Indian shuttler went down in straight games to Lin Chun-Yi, who created history by becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the prestigious title. But the story of Lakshya Sen’s defeat is not merely about badminton final. It is also about the contrasting way India celebrates its sporting heroes. Had the same narrative unfolded on a cricket field, the reaction would have been dramatically different. In cricket, even defeat often becomes a story of heroism. A hard-fought loss by the Indian team can dominate television debates, fill newspaper columns and trend across social media for days. A player who narrowly misses a milestone is still hailed for his fighting spirit. The nation rallies around its cricketers not only in victory but also in defeat. The narrative quickly shifts from the result to the effort -- the resilience shown, the fight put up, the promise of future triumph. This emotional investment is one of the reasons cricket enjoys unparalleled popularity in India. It has built a culture where players become household names and their performances, good or bad, become part of the national conversation. Badminton Fights Contrast that with what happens in sports like badminton. Reaching the final of the All England Championships is a monumental achievement. The tournament is widely considered badminton’s equivalent of Wimbledon in prestige and tradition. Only the very best players manage to reach its final stages, and doing it twice speaks volumes about Lakshya Sen’s ability and consistency. Yet the reaction in India remained largely subdued. There were congratulatory posts, some headlines acknowledging the effort and brief discussions among badminton enthusiasts. But the level of national engagement never quite matched the magnitude of the achievement. In a cricketing context, reaching such a stage would have triggered days of celebration and analysis. In badminton, it often becomes just another sports update. Long Wait India’s wait for an All England champion continues. The last Indian to win the title was Pullela Gopichand in 2001. Before him, Prakash Padukone had scripted history in 1980. These victories remain among the most significant milestones in Indian badminton. And yet, unlike cricketing triumphs that are frequently revisited and celebrated, such achievements rarely stay in the mainstream sporting conversation for long. Lakshya Sen’s journey to the final should ideally have been viewed as a continuation of that legacy, a reminder that India still possesses the talent to challenge the world’s best in badminton. Instead, it risks fading quickly from public memory. Visibility Gap The difference ultimately comes down to visibility and cultural investment. Cricket in India is not merely a sport; it is an ecosystem built over decades through media attention, sponsorship, and mass emotional attachment. Individual sports, on the other hand, often rely on momentary bursts of recognition, usually during Olympic years or when a medal is won. But consistent performers like Lakshya Sen rarely receive the sustained spotlight that their achievements deserve. This disparity can also influence the next generation. Young athletes are naturally drawn to sports where success brings recognition, financial stability and national fame. When one sport monopolises the spotlight, others struggle to build similar appeal. Beyond Result Lakshya Sen may have finished runner-up again, but his performance at the All England Championship is a reminder that India continues to produce world-class athletes in disciplines beyond cricket. The real issue is not that cricket receives immense attention -- it deserves the admiration it gets. The concern is that athletes from other sports often do not receive comparable appreciation for achievements that are equally significant in their own arenas. If India aspires to become a truly global sporting nation, its applause must grow broader. Sporting pride cannot remain confined to one field. Because somewhere on a badminton court, an athlete like Lakshya Sen is fighting just as hard for the country’s colours as any cricketer on a packed stadium pitch. The only difference is how loudly the nation chooses to cheer.

The Last Redoubt

The killing of Madvi Hidma suggests the long-running Maoist insurgency in Andhra Pradesh and central India is entering its terminal phase.

Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh

The recent killing of Madvi Hidma, one of the most feared commanders of the banned CPI (Maoist), signals yet another decisive turn in a conflict that has shaped the political and security landscape of India’s heartland for half a century. Hidma, who was Central Committee member, head of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) battalion in Chhatisgarh’s south Bastar and a symbol of Maoist battlefield lethality, was gunned down in the forests of Andhra Pradesh’s Alluri Sitarama Raju district. His wife, Madakam Raje, herself a senior zonal committee member in Chhattisgarh, died in the same encounter, along with four bodyguards.


For the Central government, the timing carries political significance given that Home Minister Amit Shah had set November 30 as the deadline to neutralise Hidma, and March 2026 for the dismantling of Maoism as a national security threat. Hidma was killed 12 days ahead of schedule.


To understand the implications of this encounter requires revisiting the arc of Maoism in Andhra Pradesh and the wider ‘Red Corridor.’ The state was once the ideological cradle of Naxalism outside West Bengal. In the 1980s and 1990s, the People’s War Group (PWG), the precursor to the CPI (Maoist), had found sanctuary in the northern agency areas of Andhra Pradesh. Rugged hills helped by a weak state presence and deep socio-economic grievances created fertile ground for mobilisation among Adivasi communities. The PWG perfected guerrilla tactics in these forests, pioneering the network of ‘dalams’ that would later spread across Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.


But Andhra Pradesh also became the first laboratory for effective counterinsurgency. The Greyhounds, raised in 1989, introduced a model of high-mobility, intelligence-driven policing that chipped away at Maoist capabilities. By the late 2000s, pressure in Andhra forced the insurgency’s centre of gravity northwards, into the contiguous forests of Bastar. There, Hidma emerged as a formidable field commander.


Born in 1981 in Sukma, he rose from a tribal recruit to the youngest member of the CPI (Maoist)’s Central Committee. This was remarkable in a hierarchy long dominated by ideologues from Andhra and Telangana. His military talent did not go unnoticed. Nambala Keshava Rao (Basavaraju), the party’s late general secretary, mentored him as the future architect of the PLGA’s operations. Hidma came to be associated with some of the insurgency’s most devastating attacks: the massacre of 76 CRPF troopers in Dantewada in 2010; the Jhiram Ghati ambush in 2013 that annihilated a generation of Chhattisgarh’s Congress leadership; and numerous strikes across the Bastar region.


For all his operational brilliance, Hidma was a man fighting for a movement losing coherence. When the CPI (Maoist) was formed in 2004 by merging the PWG with the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), it boasted around 42 Central Committee members and influence across nearly 200 districts. Today, the numbers have shrunk sharply. Barely 12 CC members remain active. This year alone, five have been killed including Basavaraju while stalwarts like Mallojula Venugopal Rao (Bhupathi) have surrendered.


Several factors explain this decline. Improved roads and mobile connectivity in formerly inaccessible forested belts have diluted Maoist control. Welfare schemes, though uneven, have expanded the state’s presence. Inter-state coordination, once patchy, has improved under initiatives such as Operation Kagar. Technology, from drones to better surveillance, has narrowed the hideouts available to leaders like Hidma.


The death of Hidma undeniably marks the end of an era. He was the last of the insurgency’s field commanders with both symbolic capital and operational skill. With his killing, the Maoist leadership’s hope of orchestrating a revival of armed struggle has dimmed considerably.


What has tipped the balance in recent years is not merely attrition within the Maoist ranks but a dramatic shift in the Indian state’s political will. Under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, New Delhi has treated Maoism not as an inevitable, slow-burning problem to be ‘managed’ but as a national-security threat to be confronted head on.

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