By Venkatesh Raghavan
The year began for India with its becoming a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for a two-year period. However, this aspect got dwarfed by India’s readiness to combat the Covid19 pandemic by coming out with two vaccines, namely Covaxin and Covishield. Close on heel, former Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly suffered from a mild cardiac arrest that was treated adequately.
Next in line, the apex court came out with a stay order that suspended the implementation of the three farm laws, in the wake of the ongoing protests by the farming community. Amidst the nationwide outcry over farmer protests, the Centre decided to put to use the two vaccines that had received emergency clearance and launch a protracted vaccination drive pan India.
The month of February witnessed the advent of natural disasters in the form of floods occurring in Uttarakhand. A week later, an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck Tajikistan and the northern states of India including Delhi felt the tremors. Later in the month, it was a political move that raised eyebrows amidst social media users including WhatsApp chats. It was about the renaming of the Motera cricket stadium in Ahmedabad. The stadium, which happens to be the biggest in India in terms of its crowd carrying capacity came to be called as Narendra Modi stadium.
Investigative report emanating from a French online journal Mediapart dwelt on the Rafale deal controversy. The report was based on inputs from the French anti-corruption agency Agence Francaise Anti Corruption (AFA). Mediapart’s report alleged that Indian middlemen involved in the Rafale deal had received kickbacks to the tune of one million Euros.
After a brief political storm over the Rafale deal, the opposition parties made a joint representation asking the Centre to ensure adequate and uninterrupted availability of oxygen cylinders in hospitals. Shortly later, the Delhi High Court issued contempt notice on the Government of India for failing to comply with the Court’s directive on supply of requisite Oxygen cylinders to the Delhi hospitals. Amidst this Covid-related flak the government was facing, actress Kangana Ranaut’s account was permanently suspended by Twitter for alleged hate posts about the violence that had stirred up in West Bengal after the state elections.
The second wave of the COVID pandemic was calamitous. The Covid pandemic continued to doggedly haunt the government as reports of thousands of corpses on the shores of the Ganges came to light. The government drew flak on the count that many of these corpses were owing to the pandemic related deaths.
Yet again another natural disaster was round the corner and cyclone Taukte hit India. It resulted in 90 deaths. Besides, the Indian meteorological department’s cyclone warning went unheeded and caused the capsizing of two barges in Mumbai’s ONGC high field, resulting in the death of at least 70 people.
Alarmingly, it was the second consecutive year in which disastrous cyclones hit both the East and West coasts of the peninsula, ostensibly caused by global warming. Besides, the north eastern region witnessed number of seismic activities but luckily not much damage was caused by these earthquakes in the region.
Reports of a cyber attack on the national carrier Air India, compromising personal data of more than 4.5 million customers around the world that included passports, credit card details, birth dates, names and ticket information hit the media glare. Also on focus was the arrest of fugitive Indian diamond trader, Mehul Choksi who was responsible for the PMC scam in Dominica. Further, allegations about irregularities in purchase of land for the purpose of constructing Ram temple in Ayodhya surfaced in parliament. Besides, controversy continued to rage about the administrator’s decision on closure of dairy farms in Lakshadweep. In addition the proposal to root out all supply of non vegetarian food created furor in the islands that form part of India’s union territories.
A spurt in media focus around spyware Pegasus being purchased and used by the Indian government came to the fore. It was alleged that the government used this spyware on journalists, Supreme Court judges, Politicians belonging to the opposition parties besides two of its own ministers. The Prime Minister’s office (PMO) issued a stout denial on this count.
In late July, the arrest of Raj Kundra, the husband of Bollywood diva Shilpa Shetty by Mumbai police on grounds that he was actively creating and circulating pornographic content caused a major furor. Besides, Media house Dainik Bhaskar came under the government scanner with the Income Tax department conducting raids on its premises.
Finally, it was time for good news with Indian athlete Neeraj Chopra winning an Olympic gold medal. His achievement was supported by a host of other silver medal winners including one in the boxing arena. PV Sindhu was the first Indian Olympic individual to secure two medals in Olympic events. Having won a silver medal in the previous Olympics, she followed it up with a bronze medal in the 2021 Olympics. Additionally, the Indian men’s hockey team won a medal after a gap of four decades. The hockey team fetched a bronze medal.
However, when it came to the functioning of Parliament’s monsoon session, it was bad news again. A slew of bills were passed in both the houses without proper discussion or debate, including the one on combating the Covid pandemic. The treasury benches attributed this to the uncooperative role played by the opposition parties. It was the field of sports again that resulted in good news with Indian Paralympics fetching both gold and silver medals in the Tokyo event.
The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) seized two containers carrying more than 2988 kg of Heroin that landed at Gujarat’s Mundra port. The source of the contraband was reportedly Afghanistan. It was deemed as the enforcement agency’s biggest seizure till date. Soon after this, Bollywood again courted trouble with a nodal enforcement agency. The controversy surrounded Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan being arrested by the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) for possession and use of narcotic drugs on board a cruise ship that was headed towards Goa. The Investigative journalists’ consortium published the Pandora papers that featured names of prominent Indians including Anil Ambani, Nira Radia, Jackie Shroff and Nirav Modi.
Next, the farming community ran into bad weather when eight of them were killed when a vehicle owned by the union minister Ajay Kumar Mishra’s son ran over them. Then again came a cause to cheer, with the Tata Group receiving the government nod to acquire100% stake of Air India through its subsidiary Talace Private Ltd, having spent decades after bequeathing it. However, the power situation turned into a grave cause for concern with eight Indian states reporting outages owing to shortage of coal fuel to their thermal power stations. Uttarakhand was again in the news for massive flooding that caused a minimum of 64 deaths.
The month of November witnessed India’s fintech company Paytm’s share prices falling steeply by 27.4% on the day of its listing. The IPO floated by Paytm was originally valued at INR 18,300 crores. This was reported as the biggest listing day loss in the history of the Indian share market. It was then time for the Indian farming community to celebrate with Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing the repeal of the three controversial farm laws. However, it was followed by heavy rains and flash floods in Rayalaseema, in the southern part of the country that claimed 29 lives.
The last month was witness to attacks on various Christian run institutions across Indian states, including destruction of statues of Christ, rude and violent interruptions in Church sermons besides violence targeted at Convent institutions in the country. Tragedy also struck when chief of defense staff, Bipin Rawat and 12 others were killed in a chopper crash near Coonoor Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu. The sole silver lining was Indian model Harnaaz Sandhu winning the Miss Universe crown for India.
Last but not the least. The climate change showed its impact at the very fag end when out of nowhere, heavy rains due to cloudburst flooded Chennai on December 30, 2021, taking even the Meteorological Department by surprise. A record 200 mm rainfall was registered that day.
