Interlinked fates

 

There is an interesting report. Food experts have noticed a change in the Chinese palate. More pork and less duck and goose meat is being consumed in Chinese restaurants and homes. The rise in the consumption of red meat and fall in the birdie delicacies means the poultry farming business going down. Loss for poultry farmers; gain for pigsty owners.

There are other consequences also in different regions, especially India. The cost of shuttlecocks has gone up by as much as fifty percent. The lesser the duck and goose meat in kitchens, the lesser the feathers available for the Chinese shuttle makers.

China has near monopoly over the shuttlecock trade, hosting the premiere brands in the segment. So the Indian importers have to pay more.

Now, it directly affects the financial fate of Indian badminton academies. They have to spend more money on training young shuttlers. As a result, they are forced to charge more from the trainees, majority of whom hail from modest lower middle class in society.

Boys and girls from economically and socially sound families are not usually drawn to spend the crucial period of their youth in sweating out in unknown, unglamorous corridors of sports training. They have better choices to excel in academics, elite jobs, entertainment and business. Most of the sporty sloggers come from the middle and lower middle classes. They carry the weight of expectations from their struggling wards to make a name in the sports arena, earn loads of money and heave the family’s social status in one clear jump. So they are willing to sweat out with aching limbs and bruised skins.

Shuttlecock prices going up by as much as fifty percent just because the Chinese are eating more pork is a spin-off of the modern-day travesty—the countries are interlinked more than ever before; and they are divided more than ever as well. The countries are getting more and more interdependent side by side becoming more divided politically. Economics pulling this way; politics pulling that way. Like two hands churning milk. The fates of millions of common people getting churned by the economic-political churner—some of them being badminton players in developing countries.

And what will come out of this churning? It will be ghee for the select few corporate houses and oligarchs, sour buttermilk for some more people, and absolutely nothing for the teeming masses. The last in the category are sold forever-unfulfilled dreams. At high prices. They pay it through almost un-paying labor, hardcore bone-breaking labor.