Welcome to Ashish Pal 's World

2008 was an event­ful year. A lot of sto­ries to be told and remem­bered.

It was a promis­ing start to the year with the econ­omy grow­ing at well above 8 pct and the Sen­sex touch­ing a stag­ger­ing 21,000 points in late Jan­u­ary.

Infla­tion was the only worry as global crude prices were near the 150-dollar mark.

For its part, the govt was con­fi­dent about han­dling infla­tion and announced a 60,000-crore rupee debt relief pack­age for farm­ers which became the high­light of the annual budget.

But global crude prices showed no signs of mod­er­a­tion and India’s infla­tion too crossed the dou­ble digit mark.

What added to the govt’s prob­lems was pres­sure from its coali­tion allies. The Com­mu­nist par­ties pulled out over India’s his­toric civil­ian nuclear deal with the United States and the govt’s sur­vival was put to the ulti­mate test.

But par­lia­men­tary pol­i­tics in India dipped to a new low when wads of cash were whipped out in the well of the house. Oppo­si­tion MPs claimed money was used to buy sup­port. The alle­ga­tions did not stick and the Man­mo­han Singh govt sur­vived the trust vote.

But the prob­lems were mount­ing. The global sub­prime cri­sis took its toll and the stock mar­kets started crash­ing as FIIs pulled out bil­lions of dol­lars. The Sen­sex has lost more than 60 per­cent this year and is now hov­er­ing around the 10,000 mark, mak­ing it one of the worst per­form­ers in the Asian equity scene.

The econ­omy too was no longer insu­lated and growth esti­mates for one of the world’s fastest grow­ing economies have been revised down­wards. Multi-billion dol­lar stim­u­lus pack­ages have been announced and an aggres­sive rate-cut cam­paign has been ini­ti­ated by the Reserve Bank of India. But econ­o­mists and ana­lysts say more needs to be done to sal­vage India as the rest of the world sets off on a road to recession.

Cor­po­rate India too had its share of highs and lows. While Tata wowed every­one with the Nano, the world’s cheap­est car, the com­pany was forced to move its plant out of West Ben­gal thereby delay­ing the car’s roll-out.

Investor con­fi­dence was on a razor’s edge through­out the year. While India’s top pri­vate lender ICICI’s share price dipped more than 70 pct as con­cerns arose over the health of its books, IT major Satyam Com­puter Ser­vices faced some tough ques­tions about cor­po­rate gov­er­nance after a botched attempt to buy two of its sis­ter firms for $1.6 billion.

Indian air­lines strug­gled too amid soar­ing fuel costs and dwin­dling pas­sen­ger num­bers. Car­ri­ers like Jet Air­ways faced staff ire over efforts to down­size and survive.

More than any­thing else, it was the inter­nal secu­rity sit­u­a­tion that took a turn for the worse. Hun­dreds of lives were lost as a series of blasts shook var­i­ous Indian cities.

If the bombs in Ban­ga­lore, Ahmed­abad, New Delhi and Guwa­hati were blamed on Islamist mil­i­tants, the nee­dle of sus­pi­cion in the Male­gaon blasts pointed to Hindu extrem­ists. A serv­ing offi­cer of the Indian army is still being interrogated.

But all the vio­lence seemed only a dress rehearsal for what turned out to be the most auda­cious ter­ror strike in the his­tory of inde­pen­dent India.

Armed assailants held India’s finan­cial cap­i­tal hostage for nearly three days. 179 peo­ple were killed as many of Mumbai’s iconic land­marks includ­ing the Chha­tra­p­ati Shiv­aji Ter­mi­nus, Taj Mahal hotel and the Oberoi-Trident came under fire.

The lone sur­viv­ing attacker said he came from Pak­istan and New Delhi has put Islam­abad on notice. A wor­ried world is watch­ing and urg­ing restraint as reports emerge of height­ened mil­i­tary activ­ity along the bor­der sep­a­rat­ing the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

The man on the street is anx­ious too. There’s been a clar­ion call for civil­ian activism. They want account­abil­ity, not just hol­low assur­ances from the polit­i­cal leadership.

Heads did roll. Union home min­is­ter Shiv­raj Patil was asked to go. The Maha­rash­tra CM and home min­is­ter were sacked too.

But did it pla­cate the com­mon man? Amid all the ten­sion, five Indian states went to polls and the results showed that devel­op­ment was a big­ger elec­tion issue than ter­ror. It was a les­son that the main oppo­si­tion party BJP learnt the hard away.

Its “Con­gress is soft on ter­ror” cam­paign failed to win pub­lic approval as it tried to mount an assault on the Congress-led coali­tion ahead of the 2009 gen­eral elections.

The biggest sur­prise of all was the assem­bly elec­tions in Jammu and Kash­mir which wit­nessed more than 50 per cent voter turnout.

The turn­around in pub­lic opin­ion comes less than six months after the state was up in arms over the Amar­nath land row, some thing which led some com­men­ta­tors in New Delhi to even ques­tion­ing the wor­thi­ness of hold­ing on to Kashmir.

So, does this mean that what had started off a mem­o­rable year will turn out to be one best forgotten?

Well, if you look at the sport­ing arena, it’s actu­ally been a good year for India.

The Indian cricket team started off win­ning the tri-series in Aus­tralia. The suc­cess of the inau­gural IPL 20/20 league reaf­firmed India’s pre-eminence as one of most pow­er­ful forces in the world of cricket. India capped its sea­son with home series wins over both World cham­pi­ons Aus­tralia and Eng­land and many Indi­ans now hope India can actu­ally become no.1 in world cricket.

2008 was also a year that saw Saurav Gan­guly leave in a blaze of glory while oth­ers like Sachin Ten­dulkar and Rahul Dravid did enough to let a demand­ing but ador­ing pub­lic know that they remain a force to reckon with.

New heroes like Gau­tam Gamb­hir and Ishant Sharma emerged, and there was suc­cess for other Indian sports­men too.

Abhi­nav Bindra the nation proud win­ning India’s first indi­vid­ual Gold in shoot­ing at the Bei­jing Olympics.

While box­ers like Vijen­der Kumar packed a punch, Sushil Kumar grap­pled both inner fear and pres­sure to add a bronze from the wrestling mat and make it one of India’s most mem­o­rable cam­paigns in the world’s biggest sport­ing spectacle.

Jeev Milkha Singh win­ning the Asian Golf’s Order of Merit and shut­tler Saina Nehwal’s mete­oric rise in the bad­minton world brought India more cheer.

In the field of lit­er­a­ture, India’s Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker Prize for his novel ‘The White Tiger’, a dark tale about the son of a rick­shaw puller who dreams of escap­ing poverty.

It was only the third time in the Booker’s 40-year his­tory that a debut novel won the award. But the win also raised the ques­tion whether only the darker side of con­tem­po­rary India appealed to West­ern readers.

So, it has indeed been a roller­coaster year for the country.

But what about 2009? What’s in store for India and Indi­ans?

There is another pic­tures story from boston globe - http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/2008_in_photographs_part_2_of.html

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/2008_the_year_in_photographs_p.html

thx — retuers