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Nehru blundered by trusting China: Venkateswaran
New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru never realized until it was too late that China can never be “a real friend to anybody except themselves”, according to late foreign secretary A.P. Venkateswaran.
Venkateswaran, whose tenure as foreign secretary ended abruptly in 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister, was the deputy secretary looking after China in the external affairs ministry here from early 1962 till late 1964.
In a lengthy interview given to the ministry’s Oral History project now published for the first time in a book, Venkateswaran says that India should have woken up when the Chinese invaded Tibet.
According to him, Sumal Sinha, an Indian diplomat then in Lhasa and a talented Chinese scholar, messaged New Delhi: “The Chinese have entered Tibet. The Himalayas have ceased to exist.”
“Yet such a powerful telegram did not shake the Indian establishment as it should have,” he is quoted as saying in the book “Venkat Forever” (Konark Publishers).
“I think it largely reflects negatively on our idol who happened to be Jawaharlal Nehru and who continued to harbour very fond images of China and India leading Asia and the world forward.
“Nehru at no time fully comprehended that China was not a real friend to anybody except themselves.
“My own stay in China many years later in the 1980s convinced me further still that the Chinese cannot be friends of anybody.
“They are too full of themselves to be able to share anything including an idea with anybody else. That is why the Chinese call themselves the Middle Kingdom.”
Venkateswaran goes on to say that on the issue of China, which in 1962 fought a bitter border war with India, “Nehru was his own victim because Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel” wrote two warning notes to him on the subject.
“The Chinese have taken Tibet, he (Patel) said, and they are now our immediate neighbour and we have to take precautions against them. Nehru did not heed his advice.”
Venkateswaran felt that one of the men who contributed negatively to the situation leading to the war with China was V.K. Krishna Menon, then the defence minister.
“While V.K. Krishna Menon had many talents, I think he was primarily a hypocrite,” he said, recalling his own family’s long association with Menon.
Venkateswaran, who spent decades in the foreign service (he died in September 2014), says the Russians, during the Cold War, were more than nice to India but “I am afraid even today India has not shown enough appreciation”.
He recalled that once when India wanted to buy a second hand submarine from Moscow, the Russians said: “Why a second hand submarine? We will supply you a new one.”
He said: “They used to take out stuff from their own stocks to give to India, which no country ever does. I know of cases where the Russians went out of the way and took out stocks from their own supplies and sent those to us.
“We don’t show enough appreciation for that. Even today, the Russians have stood by India on the nuclear reprocessing which no other country has done.”
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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