Bridge, boxing gold add to India’s record tally
GOLD RUSH But women’s hockey team loses final and boxer Sushil Kumar exits
show up, not being able to defend the men’s hockey title, losing the women’s hockey final, and twotime Olympic wrestling medallist Sushil Kumar exiting in the first round of the men’s 74kg.
So, is the future’s looking good? Maybe. Do we have a reason to look east two years from now to Tokyo? Perhaps. Has this been India’s breakthrough Asian Games? one certainly hopes so.
Not many outside the bridge circuit would have known Bardhan and Dey Sarkar. Not many would have had a clue as to why Pincky Balhara and Malaprabha Yallapa Jadhav were in Jakarta and whether kurash was a sport. Or that Manjit Singh had opted not to see his newborn in his quest for the 800m gold. They wouldn’t have heard about a village called Kalina in Meerut district till a farmer’s son, Saurabh Chaudhary, 16, won the 10m air pistol gold with monk-like calm reminiscent of Abhinav Bindra’s disposition when he won the men’s 10m air rifle gold in the 2008 Olympics.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh said on Saturday that Maoist rebels, who have hitherto operated from rural and remote areas, have entered the cities because of a crackdown by the central government and are now trying to influence public opinion and spread their ideology in urban India.
“From 126 districts earlier, Naxalite activities have now been restricted to just 10-12 districts because of the action taken by us. But now they [the Maoists] are adopting a new strategy. They have come to the cities and are trying to influence people,” Singh said at the Shikhar Samagam event organised in Lucknow by Hindi daily, Hindustan,
LUCKNOW: