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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 New Manhattan Project

Biotechnology is the next frontier, and China seems to understand that better than America does.

In 1942, when America launched the Manhattan Project, it assembled the best minds of the age behind a single, world-altering goal: to harness atomic power before Nazi Germany could. The project was secretive, urgent and in the end, decisive. Today, a new race is underway - not for the atom, but for the code of life itself. And this time, it is China, not America, that seems most determined to win.


The implications are vast. A report from America’s National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology spells out the danger with clinical precision. Biotechnology is becoming the foundation of military, economic and technological power. Biology, long the domain of academic obscurity, is being fused with artificial intelligence to create weapons, cures, crops and capabilities once relegated to science fiction. Whoever leads in this domain, the Commission warns, will shape the future of geopolitics. Right now, that leader looks likely to be China.


The stakes are arguably higher than before, encompassing not just weapons systems, but the fundamental building blocks of human health and capability.


China’s ambitions in biotechnology are no secret. As early as 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared biotechnology a ‘priority frontier’ in its national strategy. It has since poured billions into synthetic biology, gene editing and precision medicine. Its doctrine of “Military-Civil Fusion” ensures that civilian biotech breakthroughs can be swiftly commandeered for military use. The result is a system in which no clear line separates cancer research from battlefield enhancement. Such blurred boundaries recall the Soviet Union’s Cold War practice of embedding military applications into every scientific frontier.


The Commission paints a picture that would be comic if it were not so chilling: a future in which China fields genetically engineered soldiers, augmented by machine intelligence, in ways that make drone swarms look quaint. America’s disarray stands in sharp contrast. Its once-commanding lead in biotechnology, built on decades of public investment and private innovation, is now imperilled by political paralysis, funding cuts and bureaucratic drift.


History offers a cautionary tale. Britain, after inventing the steam engine and the spinning jenny, frittered away its early technological lead through complacency. The United States risks making the same mistake with biotechnology.


The report notes that China is not simply innovating but also manipulating markets in familiar ways. Through state support and aggressive pricing, Chinese firms have undercut competitors abroad, forcing closures and consolidations. It is a playbook borrowed from semiconductors, rare earths and solar panels and one that Western policymakers despite repeated warnings have proven slow to counter.


India offers a glimpse of how such tactics unfold. In 2022, it slapped anti-dumping duties on Chinese pharmaceutical ingredients to protect its fledgling biotech sector. Few others have been so bold. America’s biotech supply chains remain dangerously reliant on Chinese firms. One need only recall the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when mask shortages exposed the fragility of American medical logistics to imagine the consequences of similar dependencies in far more critical biotechnologies. In a future biological crisis, supply chain vulnerability could mean the difference between resilience and capitulation.


The Commission thus advocates not merely investment, but protection: a $15bn surge into biotechnology over five years, a new national office to coordinate efforts, tighter controls on Chinese access to research, and the rapid expansion of allied supply chains.


Of course, such measures will not come cheap. Nor will they be universally popular. Free-market purists will bristle at industrial policy; libertarians will balk at restrictions on academic exchange. But the uncomfortable truth is that biology, like physics in the 1940s, has become a theatre of power politics.


China appears to have learned the lesson of the Manhattan Project that in a world of transformational technology, the first mover wins and often writes the rules. If America wants to avoid becoming a client state in a biopolitical order shaped in Beijing, it must relearn the art of urgency.

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