In December 2017, The Dutch cricket team became an official One Day International (ODI) team. This means it will play in the ICC ODI League 2020-22.
While this has brought cheers and boosted spirits among players and fans, they feel shortchanged by a shrinking World Cup (10 teams will play the 2019 World Cup, down from 14 in 2015). The general feeling is that broadcast revenues are being sought at the expense of spread of the game. This marginalizes not just The Netherlands, but 'Associate' cricket teams around the world, despite tremendous improvements in standards of their game.
The Netherlands and Britain have been the closest of allies: historically, culturally, politically, and economically. So when Britain voted to leave the EU, the Dutch initially pushed for a sweet-deal-Brexit. However, the benefits they would draw from EU's long term stability, far outweighed their economic and political losses on account of Brexit.
Watch the Dutch version ‘Brexit: een Nederlandse perspectief’>>
As the world battles the Corona virus, it is clear what needs to be done to combat its spread: Testing, Testing, Testing; and Lockdowns. The costs of testing were always known. Costs of lockdowns are becoming increasingly apparent.
In developing countries like Kenya, a bulk of the workforce is engaged in daily work and earns day-to-day. Unlike richer countries in Europe and North America, they cannot afford to shut down economic activity as a way of combating the Corona pandemic. On the contrary, long shutdowns will make much of the population more vulnerable, since they will impede people's ability to access income, nutrition, immunity, and health services. Besides, with its large fiscal deficit, the amount of money Kenya can borrow from international markets is limited. And there isn't a lot of international aid going around at the moment.
So what are Kenya's options? Or India's/Bangladesh's/Morocco's/Vietnam's/ other developing countries' for that matter. Kenya-based Policy Analyst Suvojit Chattopadhyay (Adam Smith International) weighs in, in this interview. According to him, developing economies cannot escape a certain amount of hit. The focus should be on minimizing the economic impact of the pandemic, and on making a long-term recovery plan. Besides, this could be an opportunity to bring in long-term changes to the public sector, and identify and support businesses of the future.
On March 24, 2020, India announced the first of its many successive of lockdown, to combat the spread of #COVID19. Almost on cue, crowds of hundreds of thousands appeared at transport hubs in some of the big cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Turned out, these were people who had migrated from rural areas, and were engaged in seasonal, low-paying jobs. They were trying to squeeze into the last buses and trains to get back home. Many of them walked, hundreds of kilometres.
Liby Johnson is the Executive Director of Gram Vikas, an NGO that works in areas that are home to millions of such migrant workers. In this video, he helps us understand who these migrants are, their socio-economic background, their motivations to migrate. And why they didn't care to self-isolate or observe social distancing like the rest of us.
'Pastoralism' is the real, traditional form of animal rearing. It involves moving with the animals through forests and grazing pastures. The milk and meat of such animals is of the highest quality.
India has almost 15 million pastoralists, which is almost 1% of the country's populations. Annually, they produce milk worth almost $2.7 billion and meat worth nearly $ 2.2 billion. Besides, the value of manure produced using their dung is estimated to be worth several billions.
Despite being crucial to food security and the economy, pastoralists' livelihood and culture is at risk. In this video, Sumer Singh Bhati, a pastoralist from Jaisalmer cautions that traditional pastoralism could go extinct in India as early as 2026. He also discusses what steps could be taken to keep that from happening.
2020 was supposed to be a key year for Dutch cricket. This is the year the ODI Cricket League (2020-2023) was to start. The Netherlands was the only Associate nation to qualify for the league; performing in the league was their ticket to the 2023 ODI World Cup. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of all matches last year. This robbed the Dutch of precious matches against big teams (Pakistan, New Zealand, England, West Indies: they rarely get to play them), and of their plans to broaden cricket's fanbase in the country. In this video, national men's coach Ryan Campbell talks about the disappointments and challenges of the lost year, and about the team's preparations for matches on the other side of the pandemic.
Across the world, there are communities that eat soil. You might even find soil-based edibles at your local super market. Is that just plain weird, or is there any science behind this?
Vegetarianism and veganism are on the rise. More and more are giving up meat and dairy. For many, the reason is that raising animals is a huge drain on water resources and land, much more than growing crops. This is a valid concern, but mostly for factory farming of animals, which involves holding large numbers of animals in relatively small spaces, restricting their movements, and feeding them processed feed. An alternative is pastoralism, a system in which animals move freely, grazing on common land and feeding on crop residue. When done right and supported with the right policies, pastoralism can be a resource-efficient way of producing protein, while supporting crop cultivation and providing valuable services to the ecosystem.
Even as England complete a comprehensive 3-0 sweep of their ODI #cricket series against Netherlands (June 2022), Netherlands cherish hosting the world champions for a full series-- a rare opportunity for the Associate nation made possible due to the format of the ODI Super League (2019-23). Sadly, the League has been scrapped, casting doubts on whether an Associate team will get to play with the bigger teams for an extended period ever again.