DailyOh! Why Line of Actual Control has failed to control Chinese aggression
Rising coronavirus numbers are a cause of worry but one number rising over the other has provided some reason for relief. For the first time since the times of coronavirus arrived, the number of those who have recovered from the disease crossed the number of active cases in India. The number of positive cases this Wednesday morning reached 2,76,583. As many as 1,33,632 of these are active cases, while 1,35,206 have recovered. Sadly, 7,745 have died.
The number of those recovered is important because they are the ones who break the chain of transmission completely. To break free out of our houses, it is this chain we need to break.
DMK MLA Anbazhagan, however, could not recover from the viral infection and died this morning as his existing kidney complications could not deal with the disease. Anbazhagan’s demise left his party chief MK Stalin distraught and asking, “Where will we see you after this, brother?”
We hope those dealing with loss of lives find the strength to deal with it.
On the border, India and China are dealing with some long-standing issues. To deal with it all in a peaceful manner, both sides have pulled back their armies by 2-2.5 kms. Read this to know the full details of who withdrew from where. But the question over why the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has failed to control the two sides remains.
To answer that, we need to step back in time. Actually, this would need some back and forth. So straighten up. The India-China border is 3,488 km long. To begin with, China does not agree. It has not stated an official figure on how long the border is because if it does so, it will have to stick to it. The thing with encroachers is that they do not stick to boundaries and borders. They encroach some, and when they find little or no resistance, they encroach some more. The Chinese state media, however, puts the figure at 2,000 kms.
Now, this not-agreed-upon length of border has been divided into three sectors – western, middle and eastern.
In 1962, when the Indo-China war happened, the Chinese captured 38,000 square kilometers of Indian territory in Aksai Chin. Maybe China thought just because Aksai Chin’s got a Chin, it belonged to them. The war ended and India declared China’s occupation of Aksai Chin as illegal. Border skirmishes continued.
The status quo remained till the 1990s. In 1992, former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and his Chinese counterpart Li Peng decided to sit on the negotiating table. As in they sat on chairs, with a table in front of them, to talk things out.
In 1993, they came to the conclusion that the status quo minus the border skirmishes was the best solution for long-lasting peace. This meant accepting that which is under the control of the other, belongs to the other. What is under Chinese control is Chinese, while that which is Indian control is Indian. The pact accepting the LAC was signed on September 7, 1993.
So, what are the two sides fighting over in 2020? That which they were fighting over even in 1993, or that which they were battling over in 1962. While the broader framework of having and respecting LAC was agreed upon, an agreement could not be reached upon the exact LAC. There are 23 points across LAC that China still did not agree upon. The latest trouble had come in the eastern sector of the LAC, which is the Ladakh region. Eleven of the 23 not-agreed-upon points are in this region. As we told you, in keeping with its habit of encroachment, China lays claim to Indian land beyond the land that it has already grabbed and that as per the 1993 agreement, India accepted to not fight over.
For now, tensions have been defused because the 1993 agreement made both parties commit to make all efforts to reduce tensions whenever the LAC is breached. But how did the current round of tensions start. Yes, China started it, but how exactly? Read this to know the answer.
For now, the armies are in talks and the push back of 2-2.5 km is to reduce tension so that talks can move on freely.
A lot of people are fighting over the issue on Twitter too. Some things never change. But Twitter changed last night. We mean it introduced a change. Fleets. A feature for sharing fleeting thoughts.
Fleeting thoughts last a short time, on Twitter they would last 24 hours. But on Twitter everything stays forever - even deleted tweets. You may have deleted them but some have made a career out of taking screenshots of all tweets on Twitter. They take them, preserve them and then dig them out when the moment to embarrass someone arrives. The trick has been done to death. The death of embarrassment. No one is getting embarrassed at the sight of their old tweets anymore. We do not know what Fleets plan to achieve apart from give people the feeling of having something new to experiment with (and will seem extremely similar to Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat).
But the use of the word caught our imagination. So we decided fleet should be the Word Of The Day. At least on Twitter, that’s how the day began.
But the use of the word fleet in modern English began with the use of the word in old English. In old English the word fleot meant ‘ship, shipping’ and from fleotan meant ‘float, swim’.
According to Oxford dictionary, fleet is a group of military ships commanded by the same person. The commander of Twitter’s fleets is Jack Dorsey. Like a ship disappears into the horizon, so do fleeting feelings and so will your fleets on Twitter after others have seen it for 24 hours.
Since we are talking time, let us tell you who we found waiting for its time. A langur. A langur, a variety of Asian monkey, was spotted waiting its turn to see the doctor in Karnataka. A video of the incident was shared on Facebook.
What happened to the langur? Read this to know.
Now, we managed to displace monkeys from their homes because we apparently have more brains and we can use that to expand. We have used that brain to even capture, kill and eat the monkey brain without realising that the practice could give us monkey brains too.
Confused?
Actually eating monkey brains can give eaters a fatal and degenerative brain disease. The brain disease is called prion disease. Now, consuming the nerve tissues of mammals is a health hazard, but eating the brain is particularly brainless because it can lead to prion diseases. A prion is a type of protein that can trigger normal proteins in the brain to fold abnormally. Who wants a bandar brain? Just about no one (but a bandar).
But all human brains applied to controlling the fire caused by the oil leak from Baghjan oil field in Assam’s Tinsukia district have failed to come up with a solution so far. Over 3,000 people living around the field have been shifted to relief camps. But just about a kilometre from the field is the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park that is at risk. The oil and gas leak started on May 27 and the fire that started because of it on June 9 has been uncontrollable because it has leaking oil to fuel it further.
According to OIL, the well was producing 100,000 standard cubic metres per day (SCMD) of gas from a depth of 3,870 metres before the blowout in May. What is a blowout? A sudden and uncontrollable gushing out of oil and gas.
On Wednesday, two firefighters involved in the efforts to douse the fire were found dead. A third one is still missing.
How long before the fire can be doused and people return home? Oil India Limited spokesperson Tridib Hazarika said it will take four more weeks to complete the operation.
We will leave you with that for today.
See you tomorrow.