DHIRUBHAI AMBANI AND HIS JAMNAGAR REFINERY-A MIRACLE

Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State visited India to get refining of crude oil done for the US and then called India a refining superpower of the world. 

That is really an exaggeration because China leads the world’s refining capacity with 18.5 million barrels per day, 2nd is the US with 18.4 million barrels per day, 3rd is Russia with 6.8 million barrels per day, and then India in 4th position  with 5.8 million barrels per day. 

As Rubio visited Jamnagar Refinery, it is in focus now and I happened to see a video on the Jamnagar Refinery and the facts shown in that video stunned me. I have also done a bit of research on that. Giving a link to the video below...

India exported 65 million tons of Petro products in the year 2025 (for which data is available). Of this, Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery alone accounts for 70%. 

India has an aggregate refining capacity of 267 million tons or over 5 million barrels per day which is about 6% of the Worlds refining capacity.

Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery capacity alone is 1.4 million barrels of crude or 68 million tons annually. So, this refinery alone consists more than 25% of India’s refinery capacity. 

It is relevant to note here that the Jamnagar refinery operates over 100% of its capacity frequently. On one occasion it ran at 121% of its installed capacity which is simply unbelievable. 

This refinery is the largest standalone refinery in the world itself and contributes 1.5% to the worlds refining capacity.  2nd in the world is Paraguana Refinery in Venezuela with an installed capacity of 950,000 barrels per day. 

The Nelson Complexity Index (NCI) measures an oil refinery's level of sophistication, conversion capacity, and ability to turn crude oil into high-value light products (such as gasoline and diesel) relative to a basic crude distillation unit (which has an index of 1.0). 

The Jamnagar refinery complex features a high Nelson Complexity Index of 21, allowing it to process over 216 different grades of crude oil, including heavy and ultra-heavy crudes. It is the most complex refinery in the world itself by the Index. 

The US refineries average 9.5 on the NCI scale and the European refineries average 6.5. The Chinese refineries have an NCI of 12. 

The Jamnagar Refinery was built by Reliance on 7500 acres of barren land near the sea. The refinery complex alone covers 1000 acres. 

This massive and complex refinery was built with lightning speed in just 33 months’ time and commenced operations in Dec 1999. 70,000 workers were on the construction of the project day and night. 

Prior to the refinery commencing refining operations India was forced to import refined Petro products for its use. This refinery turned that around and made India an exporter of Petro products. 

India’s refining capacity in 1999 was a mere 70 million tons and the Jamnagar refinery alone has added a like amount to the refining capacity of India. 

The refinery did not bother the local areas for water and set up a desalination plant with a capacity of 400,000 cubic meters (or 400 million litres of fresh water) of water per day sufficient for its use. 

This water, after being used in the refinery is treated and is then used to water the massive greenbelt made of mango trees planted by Reliance. 

They have planted 130,000 mango trees of some 100 varieties of mango in the belt and the produce of mangoes is exported. 

This refinery does not need any Port to import its crude. It uses the Single Point Mooring Systems or SPM’s where massive crude oil carrying ships can anchor at sea near the moorings from where crude is pumped through undersea pipelines to the refinery. 

Luckily Dhirubhai Ambani who can be called nothing but a visionary lived long enough to see his dream come true. A much maligned man he is. Manipulative he is, yes but just look at his vision and futuristic thought. 

He dreamed of something that never existed in the world at that time and no amount of appreciation is enough for this man. 

And all that from a man from a relatively low industrialised country at that time. An American building such a refinery need not be appreciated as much but an Indian doing it is nothing short of a miracle.

https://youtu.be/a-mvR4-bZlc?si=9qP3cgHJJJ0rj77w

HERACLITUS, PARMENIDES & ZENO GREEK PHILOSOPHERS OF THE 6TH CENTURY BC

 

    HERACLITUS: He is from the Ionian city of EPHESUS and was born in 535 BC. He believed that everything changes continuously and all things are in a state of flux. He also said that you cannot bathe in a river twice because by that time the river changes too.

Heraclitus said, there is nothing everlasting in the Universe and everything is in a state of FLUX. He was born as an Aristocrat and therefore detested Democracy. He claimed that he discovered something that no other philosopher before him did and said that the Universe evolved from FIRE.

He said that everything in the Universe is evolving and constantly turning into another thing. He believed that all things have dyads in nature. 

     PARAMENIDES: He was born in the Greek city of Elea in Italy in 540 BC. He is an interesting character and his philosophy is totally opposite to that of Heraclitus who said everything is in a state of Flux. Nay said this guy and made the theory of Parmenides stand on its head. He said that nothing changes in the Universe and it is an illusion to think that there is any change at all.

Like Socrates before him Parmenides too had disciples and disciples of disciples and is known as the Eleatic school. The greatest disciple of this guy is Zeno who is the founder of Dialectics.

Whatever is there will never change. It has existence. It is everlasting, indivisible, homogeneous, uniform, and motionless and does not change.

Then, what is all this change, differences, plurality, birth, death etc.? Parmenides says like our Sankara that all those are our imagination. There is no sensible world and it is only an appearance. 

No one created something that exists. Neither can anyone destroy it. It is complete, infinite, and motionless. One can never say that it existed before or will exist in future, because it is there at present. It exists as a whole, inseparable and continuous. It is motionless and stands still at one place. It exists in itself.

Parmenides said that motion is impossible. Does motion not mean an object going to a place where it is not present? Since there is no place that it does not exist, motion is impossible. 

     ZENO: He was born in Elea in 490 BC. Dialectics is the art of accepting an argument and then by logic try to find paradoxes in the argument to counter it. Zeno was the first philosopher top use Dialectics.

To support his guru Paramenides theory of no change, he narrated the famous 4 paradoxes which could only be answered in the modern day 2400 years after they were narrated. 

1^st Paradox: It is impossible to go from one place to another. For example if a person has to travel 100 meters first he has to travel 50 meters, before that 25 meters, before that 12.5 meters etc. infinitesimally. The time given to the person is finite whereas he has to cross an infinite number of divisions. This is impossible. 

2^nd Paradox: Remember the story of Achilles and the tortoise? Zeno was the first person to narrate this. In a hundred meters race the tortoise was kept 10 meters ahead of Achilles. By logic Achilles should easily cross the tortoise. But for this first he has to cross 10 meters. By this time the tortoise would have gone some distance. Again Achilles will have to cross that additional distance. In the meantime the tortoise would have gone a little ahead again. Like this an infinite number of divisions had to be crossed by Achilles in a finite amount of time, which is impossible.

3^rd Paradox: At any single indivisible instant in time, a flying arrow occupies a space equal to it and is at rest. If time is composed of these static instants, and the arrow does not move during any single instant, then motion cannot happen at all.

4^th Paradox: This involves objects moving past each other in a stadium at different speeds, creating logical contradictions regarding relative speeds and the assumption that time is composed of indivisible minimum units.

TELUGU LANGUAGE & PEOPLE-ORIGINS

 

Today as I was going through some videos on You Tube, by chance I came across a Video on Telugu saying that new facts are uncovered on it. I always have a suspicion on YouTube videos and feel they represent more of opinions on such issues than fact. So, I checked on the net and found it is true. There are some interesting facts about Telugu which I want to mention here. 

Recent breakthroughs in population genetics and genomic sequencing have revealed a highly unique, ancient, and rich ancestral makeup for Telugu.

Major studies on Indian DNA including extensive analysis by the University of California at Berkeley reveal the genetic profile of the Telugu population.

There are 3 primary ancestral sources for Telugu DNA.

1. Ancient Ancestral South Indian- dates back to more than 50,000 years.

2. Indus Valley Civilization allied ancestry-around 5000-4000 years ago the Indus Valley people mixed heavily with the above stream...and formed the Ancestral South Indian profile.

3. Ancestral North Indian- profiles show that Telugu groups carry minor to moderate amounts of Ancestral North Indian ancestry.

Linguistically Telugu is an independent Dravidian language that split from Proto Dravidian around 1000 BC.

Historical linguists classify it under the South Dravidian II/Central Dravidian branch ..it is close to Tamil and Kannada.

The earliest physical evidence of Telugu words date back to Prakrit( script) inscriptions dating back to 400 BC to 257 BC

Telugu is spoken by over 8 crore native speakers and is the most widely spoken Dravidian language and the 4th most spoken after Hindi, Bengali and Marathi.

In his inscriptions Ashoka mentioned Andhra Bhrityulu which means Andhra vassals.

The Andhras were first mentioned in the Aitareya Brahmana of Rigveda dating to around 700-800 BC.

The Brahmana says that the Andhras were a non Aryan/Dasyu tribe who were exiled from Northern India near the Yamuna river, and they crossed the Vindhya range and migrated into the Southern Deccan. Andhras also appear in the Mahabharata and Ramayana. In the Mahabharata it is narrated that Andhras fought on the side of the Kauravas

PYTHAGORAS.

 

     Pythagoras was born in 582 BC and died in 500 BC. He is from a small Greek island known as Samos in the Aegean Sea. Samos was a very affluent Greek settlement and was well known then. During the time of Pythagoras Samos came under a tyrant Polycrates which made Pythagoras migrate to a city named Crotone around 530 BC. 

Before Socrates, Pythogoras was the most famous of all Greek Philosophers. 

Every child of today is familiar with the Pythogoras Theorem in Geometry over 2500 years after he was dead and gone. 

Pythagoras said that the origin of everything is numerals and without numerals there is no World. Today this may look absurd to us, but then, have our ancestors not said that everything came from “OM”. 

Amazingly the British did more research to discover Indian culture than Indians themselves. Arthur Anthony Mc Donnel wrote “A History of Sanskrit Literature” which was published in the year 1900. In that he said that it is highly probable that Pythagoras visited Persia through which he has imbibed Indian thought.   

In his book, he detailed several striking parallels between Pythagorean and ancient Indian thought. He said that the doctrine of transmigration of souls was never there in Greek thought and was brought in by Pythagoras suddenly, and had no indigenous explanation. The mathematical formulations for the Pythagorean Theorem, the philosophical assumption of 5 elements, and specific religious beliefs like taboo against eating beans had existing parallels in 6^th century BC India.

Pythagoras established a society in Crotone where the members lived together like  a family, wore the same type of clothes and had strict discipline just like in our Buddhist Sangha’s of that time. 

Pythagoras said Soul is everlasting and it does not perish. So every life form that is born dies and is again reborn as human or animal. Souls have afterlife. However, in this cycle if one goes around with good moral and ethical principles, then in some of the afterlives the soul would cease to have an afterlife. Now, this is much too close to Indian philosophical thought, so little wonder that Mc Donnel speculated that Pythagoras had a brush with Indian thought. 

Pythagoras postulated that the world is formed by dyads. He has defined 10 such dyads but does not deny other dyads. 

Greeks never had the concept of zero which India had at that time. So they did their addition, subtraction, division & multiplication through Geometry. 

Pythagoras ultimately said gave one number to everything; humans had one number while horse had another and so on for everything. Even feelings have been given numbers. 

This may look absurd to us but BAG Fuller in his “History of Philosophy” says that we need not think it to be so. The modern Physics and Chemistry rely completely on mathematics and even the definition of the elements is through numbers.  So, to that extent, if there are no numbers, there is no world.

Pythagoras assumed that the earth is not flat but is spherical. He said (as many others did) that Earth is the center of the Universe and the Moon, Sun, Planets and stars orbit it. He went on to say that these bodies while orbiting so make musical sounds. We may consider this absurd but again that was what he said. 

Western philosophy has 2 very important branches; 1. Materialism & 2. Idealism. While, Thales and other Greek philosophers were the originators of materialism, Pythagoras was the originator of Idealism. A war is on between the 2 basic systems for centuries and would continue to rage on.

PARIS AGREEMENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

 Leaders of 195 countries met at Paris in 2015 at the UN Climate Change Conference COP21 (the 21^st year of the Conference) to unite the world on Global warming.

The nations agreed on a new global climate plan as per which they agreed to:

Keep the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees centigrade over the pre-industrial revolution times.

Try to limit the rise below 1.5 degrees.

Help poorer nations to pay for clean energy and climate change. 

Based on the agreement countries set their own goals to cut pollution and the plans are called NDC’s (Nationally Determined Contributions). Nations check their progress under the plan every 5 years.  

Scientists measure 1.5 degree target with a 20 year global average and not just by 1 or 2 solitary years. This is currently at 1.4 degrees above pre industrial levels. 2024 recorded a temperature rise of over 2 degrees.

A recent UN Environment Programme Report warns that the global temperature would surpass the threshold of 1.5 degrees in a few years and would peak at 1.8 degrees and this looks certainly dangerous for the next generation.

The system of Carbon Credits had been brought in, as per which a Carbon Credit is:

“A tradable Electronic Certificate that represents reduction, avoidance or removal of 1 MT of carbon Dioxide or an equivalent Greenhouse gas.”

Projects that lower emissions like planting trees, building solar farms etc. generate credits once verified by an independent organization. Companies buy and sell these credits in carbon markets to meet legal limits or climate goals. Once a business uses a credit to compensate for its emissions the credit is permanently retired so that it cannot be reused again.

There are Compliance Markets for Carbon Credits is a government regulated system where companies face legal penalties if they exceed pollution limits.

There are Voluntary Markets for carbon Credits where organizations or individuals buy credits on their own from another to reach internal net-zero goals.

In India the Carbon Credit markets are regulated by the Ministry of Power through the “Bureau of Energy Efficiency”.

India’s NDC’s:

Reduce emission intensity by 47% by 2035 from the 2005 levels. Reach 60% non-fossil fuel powered electricity generation by 2035 & create enough forest cover to reduce 3.5 billion to 4.0  billion tons of CO2 emissions by 2035.

There are also the Carbon Offsets as against Carbon Credits. These represent the actual environmental benefit or the reduction or removal of 1 MT of Greenhouse Gas emissions, resulting from an action taken to compensate for emissions made elsewhere.

WHY SET A LIMIT ON TEMPERTAURE RISE AT ALL? : If global temperature rises by 1.5 degrees centigrade over pre industrial revolution level, it would trigger widespread changes in our climate. The effects would be:

Major land regions will experience more frequent and intense extreme heat, there would be heavy precipitation and severe flooding and there would risk of severe droughts and wildfires. They would affect Ecosystems & wildlife and pose extinction risks for many species. Oceans would raise flooding coastal communities and eroding shorelines. Although this rise is manageable at 1.5 degree rise, it becomes dangerous if the rise is 2 degrees. The acidity of the oceans would increase harming fish.

This idiot Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement twice: Once in 2020 while Biden re-joined it and Trump did it again in 2026. With blabbering and stupid idiots like Trump around humanity does not need an alien species to disturb the earth.

 

 

WHERE IS THE UNIVERSE HEADED-AND WHAT WOULD FINALLY HAPPEN?

 

From the time of the Big Bang that took place 1377 crore years ago, the Universe is expanding incessantly and galaxies in the Universe are flying away from each other. 

As per the Big Bang theory the matter in the Universe was concentrated in a small area before the Big Bang happened. The diameter of the Universe at the time of Big Bang was indeterminate, but the heat and pressure in that primordial ball were immense beyond imagination.

Theoretical models suggest that the entire matter in the Universe coalesced into a singularity. However later estimations indicate a size as big as a few meters.  What is the state of matter at this primitive stage, we cannot even fathom. But whatever the temperature and the pressure of the primordial ball, it is inevitable that it had to explode given the conditions, and so it did 1377 crore years ago. In 1 year the Universe has expanded to 100,000 light years in diameter.

But how did that happen? Einstein postulated that nothing can travel faster than light which means that the Universe can at best expand to only 1 light year in diameter in 1year. But it expanded 100,000 times more which is phenomenally faster than light.

Scientists say that is because space itself stretches and the fabric of space expands faster while the objects in it do not travel at more than the speed of light. They say that there is no limit to the expansion of the speed of the Universe.

But that looks to be a paradox to me, and in their enthusiasm, it looks to me that the theorists seem to have gone overboard. 

They claim that there is no speed limit for the expansion of space unlike in the case of objects but obviously if the space expands so fast, then is it not inevitable that the objects in it should also do so?  How can they say that space would expand far faster than light, while the objects within it would not? What the basis do they to rest their theory on? How can anyone postulate such a thing when they cannot even judge the conditions of that time and not knowing the properties of space?   

The primordial ball contained not just the matter known to us, but it also contained dark matter and dark energy to the tune of 95% which today none of our instruments are capable of measuring. The mass of the Universe is estimated by scientists to be 1.5* 10⁵⁰ tons. The Dark energy which consists of 68% mass-energy of the Universe speeds up its expansion continuously so that it accelerates.

We know that the Universe is constantly expanding, and today the known Universe should have a diameter of 1377 crore light years. However, the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes have revealed that the expansion of the Universe is in fact accelerating and this acceleration is on account of the Dark energy present in the Universe. Considering this acceleration, the diameter of the Universe has now grown to 9300 crore light years. One should keep in mind that this diameter is the diameter of the observable Universe.

That is which our instruments can allow us to postulate on and we have no means of knowing what is beyond it.  For all we know there may be other such similar Universes outside it, and logically that have to be so. There is no reason to assume that there is only Universe just because we know of only one.     

The Big Bang did not happen at a single place in the universe. It happened everywhere at once. So each Galaxy is moving away from another. As galaxies drift apart, new star formation would stop and older stars would die and the Universe would become cold, dark and empty.

But most of the theory of the Universe ending is a mere assumption. It may or may not have an end, and we can only speculate on that. Theoretically all the Hydrogen and Helium should have been exhausted by now given the rate of fusion in stars and the 1377 crore years age of the Universe, yet even today 73-75% of the mass of the Universe is Hydrogen.  Then Helium makes up 24-25% of the mass of the Universe. 

It is postulated that all the Hydrogen in the Universe has formed after the big bang. That being the case, despite zillions of stars burning Hydrogen up for 13.7 billion years would not bring down its content?

There is no explanation as to why this is so? New stars continue to form while the older stars die, so given the current conditions in the Universe, it is very difficult to accept that it would finally become cold, dark & empty. But Astronomy in some areas is like a dark street wherein one has to venture with dark glasses. Our knowledge and technology is too meagre to speculate about the ending of the Universe. 

INDIAN SCHOLAR WHO NEEDED NO FORMAL EDUCATION-RAHUL SANKRITYAYAN-

 

I was a book lover when I was at college; but it was pretty difficult to get hold of good books. I studied Chemical Engineering at the Andhra University College of Engineering between 1974-79 at Visakhapatnam. I used to search around in the few book shops that were there at Vizag for buying books. One of the shops was “Visalandhra Book House”. They used to publish many books with a communist slant.

One day when I was browsing books at the shop I found the Telugu Book “Rigveda Aryulu”. I got attracted to it and checked it and found the name of the author Rahul Sankrityayan. The name sort of intrigued me. I checked for more books by the author and found ‘Olga to Ganga”. Both the names of the books as well as the authors name pulled me toward them and I flagged them for purchase later because I had no money then and was just browsing. However, it so happened that I never purchased them later. 

Recently by chance I came across and I downloaded one of the books from the net. I read about 3 stories from the book. His first story was from 6000 BC when humans were yet primitive and the family functioned in a way which is animalistic  and is totally revolting to us. We would find the societal conditions rather revolting, but that was perhaps the way then as civilization has not yet touched them, and they behaved just like animals. But it was a matriarchal society where the mother was the head of the family, because in those days finding who is the father of a child became rather difficult.

The subsequent 2 stories of 3500 BC & 3000 BC slowly made people less barbaric yet they are very primitive compared to what we are today. So this guy approximated the behaviors of that particular age and wove their behaviors into a story which is a very difficult task indeed. So in those stories he acted like a historian of those times while he

Then I read about the author and found his life story rather fascinating. Becoming master in Buddhism and Sanskrit without actually studying them formally speaks of great intellect. That the Leningrad University itself has asked him to be a Professor despite that speaks about his merit. I give below a brief profile of the guy.   

Rahul Sankrityayan was born as Kedarnath Pandey in the year 1893. He was the eldest child in a Bhumihar Brahmin family in the Azamgarh district of UP. His maternal grandfather educated him in Urdu as it was seen as a court language. This district was in the erstwhile Oudh state. He then also attended a Hindu school where he learnt the Devanagari script. In 1902 Sakrityayan started studying Sanskrit with his uncle who was considered a great pandit in that language. In 1909 Sankrityayan completed studying middle school and his grandfather wanted him to go in for English education, Sankrityayan resisted it and preferred Sanskrit. He called English an alien language.

Sankrityayan’s travels began in 1910 with his pilgrimage to the Western Himalayas. He went to Haridwar, Rishikesh, Badrinath and Kedarnath to study Vedanta. Then he went to Varanasi and started his studies there in 1911. Because he has travelled for much time he did not have any formal education and he was a self-taught man in many subjects. Next year he travelled to Chhapra in Bihar where he was initiated as a Sadhu and was made the heir to a mahant of Vaishnava tradition. However, he got bored, left Chhapra and arrived at Ayodhya.

In 1914 he came to know about the Arya Samaj and again he left to Agra where he studied free of cost and where he picked up Arabic and other religions of the world. After 2 years he went to Lahore and studied in a Vedic school. This led to his first introduction to Buddhism as he travelled to spread the Arya Samaj movement. He visited Kushinagar, Sarnath, Lumbini & Bodh Gaya.

His political career started in 1921 when he was jailed several times. During this stay in Bihar he turned to Buddhism. He took up teaching of Sanskrit in Srilanka in 1927 where he immersed himself in the Buddhist texts and the Pali language and earned the title of Tripitakacharya. He left for Tibet in 1928, and such was the nascent state of transport then,  it took him one and half years to reach Lhasa. He learnt the local language and collected Buddhist texts there. He returned to Srilanka and was initiated as a Buddhist monk and was given the name Rahul Sankrityayan. He again travelled to Chhapra, Sindh and Sarnath and returned back to Srilanka in 1931.

In 1932 he visited London as a representative of the Mahabodhi society. The society asked him to promote Buddhism in Europe and the US but he refused and returned back to Srilanka saying that he finds the capitalist life very dreary and there are similar things in the USA so he does not want to waste his time.

In 1933 he spent his time in visiting places and also in writing. He visited Patna, Ladakh & Lahore. Then between 1934 and 1938 he visited Tibet 3 times and Burma, Korea & Japan. He brough back more than 80 Sanskrit works on Buddhism which he translated.

He visited Russia first in 1935 and then in 1937 when he started teaching Ellena Narvertovna Kozerovskaya Sanskrit at the Leningrad University. She was to be his Russian wife later and was a scholar in Mongolian.  They married that year itself and a son Igor was born to them in 1938. Due to the marriage he had to shed his Buddhist monk status and become an Upasaka instead.

In 1938 Sankrityayan joined the Congress Socialist Party. He was also a founding member of the Bihar state Communist party. He was imprisoned several times when he wrote his work ‘Olga to Ganga” in Hindi.

This work consists of 20 historical fiction short stories on the migration of the Aryans from Central Asia into India. The stories start in 6000 BC and end in 1942 spanning 8000 years. This book is now considered a classic in Hindi literature and that is something coming from a man who had very little formal education and is self-taught. This book has been translated into Nepali, Assamese, Marathi, Bengali, English, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Punjabi. It was also published in Russian, Czech, Polish, Chinese and also other languages. This is a great classic. Yes, there was criticism of scholars on distortions, anomalies and loaded history in his work, yet what the man attempted was quite mighty and mistakes have to be accepted as a part of the book. That it has been translated into so many languages alone proves its readability and romanticism of the earlier times.

In his 3^rd stay in Russia from 1945 to 1947 he was invited to take up a Professorship at the Leningrad University. He was considered an authority on Buddhism. Hs family joined him in Leningrad. He wrote a book “25 months in Russia” to narrate his experiences there. He returned back to India after Independence.

His experiences in Russia solidified his belief in Communism and also in his nationalism. In India he was active in literature and politics. His strong advocacy of Hindi and opposition to Urdu as the national language led to his dismissal from the Communist party.

Sankrityayan married very young and never knew his first wife Santoshi. H e saw her once when he was in his 40’s. That may well be because he was never home and was constantly travelling. Then he married Ellena in Leningrad who did not come to India along with him when he came back after Independence..

Later he married Kamala Sankrityayan and they had a son named Jeta and daughter named Jaya.

Sankrityayan knew 30 languages and Bhojpuri was his native tongue. He wrote on Indology, Communism, Buddhism and Philology in some 100 books. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1963 and passed away the same year.

 

ASIAN GAMES 2026-CURTAIN RAISER FOR INDIA.

 

Another big event for us, the Asian Games are fast approaching. They would be held at Nagoya in Japan from Sep 19^th to Oct 4^th.

The Nagoya games would have participation of 11,000 athletes from 45 nations and that is big. Asia accounts for 58% of the world population and so a big proportion of the World population would be represented at these games. In contrast the recently concluded Commonwealth Games had only 2715 athletes but from 74 countries. However, of these 74, only 55 were sovereign states and 19 were other dependencies.

In the last Asian Games held at Guangzhou, China, India did extremely well and won 28 Gold, 38 Silver & 40 Bronze with a total of 106 medals and stood 4^th on the Medal Tally after China, Japan & South Korea. This is the highest ever medal tally at the Asian games for India. India also sent a massive contingent of 655 athletes to those games.

At the recently concluded Commonwealth Games too India stood 4^th on the medal tally with just 39 medals. Therefore in most disciplines the Asian standards would be lower than the Commonwealth standards.

Medal Count Total for the Asian Games                2022-Gold -Men 335, Women-326.Total -661. India medals 107 is a strike rate of 16% total medal wise.

Medal Count Total for the Commonwealth games 2026 the total number of medals was 674. India medals 39 is a strike rate of 6% total medal wise.

That indicates, by Asian standards we are better than for the Commonwealth games standard.

INDIA MEDAL BREAK-UP BY SPORT 2022 ASIAN GAMES AT GUANGZHOW.

SPORT	GOLD	SILVER	BRONZE	TOTAL
ATHLETICS	6	14	9	29
SHOOTING	7	9	6	22
ARCHERY	5	2	2	9
WRESTLING	0	1	5	6
ROWING	0	2	3	5
BOXING	0	1	4	5
SQUASH	2	1	2	5
SAILING	0	1	2	3
BADMINTON	1	1	1	3
CRICKET	2	0	0	2
KABADDI	2	0	0	2
EQUESTRIAN	1	0	1	2
CHESS	0	2	0	2
TENNIS	1	1	0	2
HOCKEY	1	0	1	2
ROLLER SKATING	0	0	2	2
GOLF	0	1	0	1
WUSHU	0	1	0	1
BRIDGE	0	1	0	1
SEPAKTAKRAW	0	0	1	1
CANOEING	0	0	1	1
TABLE TENNIS	0	0	1	1
TOTAL	28	38	41	107

 

At the Commonwealth games we got medals only in 5 sports, while at the 2022 Asian Games we got medals in 22 sports.

The top 3 teams on the Medal table China, Japan & South Korea are way ahead of us and it would be difficult for us to approach even South Korea. Uzbekistan was in the 5^th place at our heels and got 22 Gold. If we can preserve our 4 th place we got last time, we can be happy.

India is sending a contingent of 503 athletes for the games. I prepared a list of 492 which was initially announced while 10 more athletes, 6 in Athletics & 4 in Surfing were added later and 1 more in some other sport whose detail I could not get. In the side column I gave the medals won in 2022 in those disciplines against respective squads for this time.

INDIAN TEAMS GOING TO NAGOYA FOR THE ASIAD 2026.

SPORT	MEN	WOMEN	TOTAL	MEDALS WON 2022
ARCHERY	6	6	12	9
ATHLETICS	35	38	73	29
BADMINTON	10	10	20	3
BOXING	6	5	11	5
CANOEING	10	9	19	1
CRICKET	15	15	30	2
CYCLING	6	8	14	0
EQUESTRIAN	7	1	8	2
ESPORTS	15	0	15	0
FENCING	8	12	20	0
FIELD HOCKEY	20	20	40	2
GOLF	3	3	6	1
GYMNASTICS	0	1	1	0
JUDO	0	3	3	0
KABADDI	12	12	24	2
KARATE	1	1	2	0
KURASH	3	4	7	0
MIXED MARTIAL	0	1	1	0
ROWING	17	5	22	5
RUGBY	0	13	0	0
SAILING	4	6	10	5
SEPAK TAKRAW	12	9	21	1
SHOOTING	15	15	30	22
SOFT TENNIS	5	1	6	0
SPORT CLIMBING	1	1	2	0
SQUASH	4	4	8	5
SWIMMING	12	0	12	0
TABLE TENNIS	5	5	10	1
TAEKWONDO	0	3	3	0
TENNIS	5	2	7	2
TEQBALL	2	1	3	0
VOLLEYBALL	12	0	12	0
WEIGHTLIFTING	1	4	5	0
WRESTLING	11	6	17	6
WUSHU	3	4	7	1
TOTAL	265	227	492

 In the last Asian Games the bulk of the medals came from the following disciplines:

1.       ATHLETICS           29

2.       SHOOTING            22

3.       ARCHERY               9

4.       WRESTLING          6

5.       ROWING                5

6.       BOXING                 5

7.       SQUASH                5

We are sending a good number of athletes in these disciplines and are bound to do well this time too.

In the following sports where we did not win a single medal last time we are sending big contingents in 2026.

1.       CYCLING              14          

2.       ESPORTS               15 New Event added.

3.       FENCING              20

4.       SWIMMING          12          

Hopefully we would pick up some medals in these events.

More women than men are in the Indian team. Surprised to see the women’s team participating in Rugby this time. No men’s team there.