ved

Manchester United ❤️

[Bruno Fernandes @B_Fernandes8]

how can I assist you? ☕

[Revathi @revathitweets]

Telangana government uprooted 10,000 trees overnight to sell off 400 acres of Kancha Gachibowli in the heart of Hyderabad exactly a year ago!

The students of University of Hyderabad had to protest, endure lathicharging & few even went to jail to save the forest, and stop the green murder.

We are a nation full of idiots with no respect for the nature.
And we deserve to burn in this hot hell we carelessly created.

[Darab Farooqui @darab_farooqui]

Look at this map.

Nagpur 45°. Ahmedabad 44°. Prayagraj 43°. Delhi 42°. The entire country is a single dark red mass. This is not a heatwave. This is a country that was told its forests were fine.

And this is April. Not May. Not June. The hottest months have not even arrived yet.

The past few days have been hell. So I did what I always do when something bothers me. I went looking for answers.

What I found was a policy con job that has been running for over two decades.

But before I explain what happened, let's clear some definitions.

A garden is not a forest. An orchard is not a forest. A plantation is not a forest.

A forest is a living system. Soil, water, fungi, insects, birds, mammals, decades of accumulated complexity, specific to its land and climate. It cannot be designed. It cannot be harvested. It regulates water, cools land, shelters hundreds of species. It takes decades to become what it is.

You can plant a forest. But it will take decades to become one.

In 2001, India's forests were disappearing. The Indian state, led by the Vajpayee government, faced a choice. Protect what remained, or change what the numbers said.

It chose the numbers.

The Forest Survey of India quietly changed the definition of what a forest means. Any land with 10% tree canopy cover and more than one hectare in area was now a forest. Your mango orchard. A coconut plantation in Tamil Nadu. A tea garden in Assam. Lodhi Garden in Delhi.

All forests, on paper.

The FSI will tell you that 10% canopy cover follows international norms. The FAO also uses 10% as its threshold. But the FAO's definition comes with a crucial exclusion that India's FSI quietly dropped. 

The FAO explicitly states that fruit tree plantations, oil palm plantations, olive orchards, and agroforestry systems are not forests. The World Bank says the same. India adopted the number but discarded the exclusion. 

It took the cover of international legitimacy while gutting the standard that gave it meaning.

The government will also tell you this was never hidden. That it was publicly stated in every report, disclosed in Parliament. That is technically true. But a disclosure buried in a technical government document is not transparency. It is the appearance of transparency. 

I did not know any of this until I went looking. Neither do most Indians whose forests, whose land, whose air this directly concerns. The con is not in what was hidden from experts. It is in what was never explained to the people it was done to.

This is not a technicality. This is the con.

It was a trick as old as power itself. If you cannot fix the problem, fix the measurement.

For ten years after 2001, Congress governed India. Two terms, two environment ministers, including Jairam Ramesh, one of the more serious ones. They saw the numbers. They knew what the numbers meant.

They did nothing.

Because the lie was convenient. India looked good in international climate negotiations. The fiction of a greening India served everyone in power, so everyone in power kept it. Congress did not create this lie. It simply chose, year after year, to live inside it.

The BJP is different.

When they returned to power in 2014, they came with something Congress never had. An absolute majority, and no coalition compulsions. They did not merely inherit the lie. They built on it. And in 2023, they legislated it.

The Forest Conservation Amendment Act of 2023 removed legal protection from "deemed forests." Forests that existed outside the official definition but were ecologically real. 

Forests that Adivasi communities had lived in and depended on for generations. Forests that cooled land, held water, sheltered species. They were not on the right list. Since the amendment, forest destruction on Adivasi land has accelerated. 

The people who knew these forests best, who had protected them longest, now watch them being cleared. Legally.

CONT++

[soo washed @anubhav__tweets]

how I begged for this to happen 868 days 14 hrs 47 mins and 3 seconds earlier

[لال بجھکڑ @afzaal_k]

Uzair Baloch arrested by #Interpol at #Dubai Airport

(Bad news for #Layari Gangsters and #PTI)

[ved @vedantkankani]

@ashchanchlani Don't do it.
@ashchanchlani

[ved @vedantkankani]

How good has @bhogleharsha been so far?
Just too Witty.

[Morgan @utdscope]

When we were humiliated 4-0 at Brentford in the summer of 2022, the football world turned away in disappointment. But one man, thousands of miles from Old Trafford, watched every painful second from his home in Madrid and sent a simple, defiant message to his agent:

“Tell them I’ll fix this.”

Those five words carried the weight of a champion who had already conquered everything. Five Champions Leagues, a shelf full of trophies, the respect of the entire game. Casemiro didn’t need Manchester United. Manchester United needed him. Yet he chose the chaos, the rebuild, the roar of a stadium desperate for leadership.

You told them you’d fix it. And for a while, you really did.

Rest well in the knowledge that Old Trafford will never forget the man who ran toward the storm ❤️

[Aashish🔰 @DrAashish_]

This Healed something inside me.. idk😭

#MUNMCI

[Football Talk @FootballTalkHQ]

🗣️ Bruno Fernandes: "I will never forget where I was when I was given the opportunity to come here four years ago. I was standing in the closet in our bedroom in Lisbon. My agent had rang me up around 10 o’clock at night, and my daughter was only three years old at the time, so that was bedtime for us. I went into the little closet to be quiet. I always told my agent, during my whole career, “I never want to hear about any transfer until it’s 100% real. I don’t want to be distracted unless there is an offer.”

So I knew if he was calling me at that hour, something was going on.

I shut the door and I said, “Miguel? Yeah?”

He said, “Are you ready to hear the news?”

I said, “About what?”

“About going.”

“Going where? Spurs?”

“United.”

“Are you joking?”

“No, no. I’m serious. United. It’s done. It’s just on you now. What do you want to do?”

I didn’t even reply. I started fighting back tears. But you know the feeling when you are trying to hold it in, so the other person doesn’t realise you’re crying, and you can’t even speak?

He said, “Bruno? Bruno? Hello?”

At that moment, my wife, Ana, comes looking for me in the bedroom.

“Bruno??? Bruno???”

She opens the door.

“What’s going on? Why are you in the closet?”

I said, “It’s Miguel. He just called. He’s saying United want me.”

She said, “Wait ...... Are you crying?”

I told her, “I don’t know! I think it’s happiness!”

[ved @vedantkankani]

@ChennaiIPL Murali Vijay
Raina

[ved @vedantkankani]

@utdshows Watch the game after he came on.
Lad did everything he could to contribute.
Lost the ball before the second yellow and was frustrated about it.
Sometimes it's just passion that makes you do things.
He will learn to be calm in such situations too. Top player yesterday.

[ved @vedantkankani]

@parthpunter The day they allow this in india, players will have to rush inside the dressing rooms hoping the can make it till there.
Some things that happen outside cannot happen in India because of the civic sense.
And no one but Indians are responsible for this.
Period.

[mutual.stark @mutualstark]

Nah, the environment Gambhir creates around players is just so toxic.
Just one bad game and he is acting like that.

Seeing this, reminds me of Dravid consoling Kohli after he got out in the 24'WC SF.
You can never earn player’s respect Gambhir, NEVER.

https://t.co/q2D7KnCCo5

[𝐟𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐯 @fedevalv_]

Man United fans wondering how they got into this 😭😭😭

[ved @vedantkankani]

@Vipintiwari952 "this time he looks hungrier"

They knew what they did.

[Dinda Academy @academy_dinda]

Feels like an average day in 2016/17/18 where Virat Kohli would hit Hundreds for fun 🥵

[Harsha Bhogle @bhogleharsha]

There was an aura around the Indian team when playing in India. You can see it disappearing in the distance.....

[Siddhant Bhatter @SiddhantBhatter]

i have Gautam Gambhir and Ruben Amorim as the head coaches of my sports teams. truly a pivotal moment in my life