It has been a strange year.
On the one hand, some stability returned to politics with the Congress party managing a fairly comfortable majority in the general elections. After the horrors of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, India actually went through 2009 without a terror strike. The economy appeared to have weathered the worldwide recession. Indian science and cricket scaled new heights.
On the other hand, the year held out ominous portents - Maoist rebels are threatening to go to war with the Indian state; food inflation is threatening to negate the gains of improved growth; and, egged on by the movement for Telangana, homegrown separatism is rearing its head again. There is growing suspicion that the country's natural resources are being bartered away cheaply. All this - and more - could turn 2010 into an extremely restive year.
Here's my pick of the defining events of 2009:
THE END OF HARDLINE HINDU NATIONALISM?
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) proudly calls itself the "party with a difference". By the end of the year, India's main opposition was a party with many differences - within. When it was trounced by Congress at the general election, its fortunes hit rock bottom. Since then nothing has gone right: its leaders have bickered bitterly and openly; and one of them was banished , ostensibly for writing a book on Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
Party president and paterfamilias LK Advani looked jaded, and as the year wound down he handed over the baton as leader of the parliamentary party to a younger colleague. He also handed over the party presidency.
Whatever the changes, the BJP appeared lost. Critics say that ideologically, the party is past its sell-by date - still making noises about building temples, refusing to come to terms with the fact that India has grown up and strident Hindu nationalism has lost its vote-catching lustre.
Others say the BJP's only hope appears to lie in reinventing itself as a modern day, right-of-centre, Indian Conservative party. But observers find the leadership uninspiring. They say the party's best chance of revival is a dramatic slide in Congress fortunes.
RAHUL GANDHI'S SECOND COMING
He began as a gawky politician with a disarming smile that won him more female admirers than serious followers. But Rahul Gandhi, the latest scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, showed some serious political mettle this year.
Travelling through the northern Indian heartland - especially in Uttar Pradesh - Mr Gandhi quietly worked on rejuvenating his party's grassroots network and attracting younger talent, his supporters say. His party staged a comeback of sorts in Uttar Pradesh - a return from virtual politician oblivion after two decades.
Mr Gandhi has his work cut out for him - revitalising Congress and making it less of a family enterprise. Apparently he believes the party should go it alone, bucking the current narrative of coalition politics. Most analysts feel he may be wrong on this, and that coalition politics is here to stay in a complex country like India. 2010 will prove whether Mr Gandhi can help maintain his party's momentum - and even perhaps take up the cabinet position which he has repeatedly been offered.
BEATING THE RECESSION
India, by and large, escaped the ravages of the global recession. Its conservative banking system and lower exposure to the world economy possibly saved the day. But to be fair, thousands lost jobs and companies stopped hiring and slashed costs. Spending plummeted and the property bubble burst.
Now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is holding out the hope of slightly higher growth - 7% plus - in this fiscal year. Companies have begun hiring again and spending is up. However, many economists believe that India's growth is not pulling enough people out of abject poverty, while deepening the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Even if India hits double-digit growth like China, there will be no reason to party when a third of its people live in dire poverty and milions of children go underfed. Why does an increasingly rich country treat its poor so shabbily?
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL?
When Tata Motors unveiled the world's cheapest car, everyone sat up and took notice. The buzz around the rear-engined, four-passenger, 624cc Nano, whose basic model costs $2155, had been immense - one magazine wrote that it embodied a "contrarian philosophy of smaller, lighter, cheaper" transport.
The Nano is a nifty little car all right. User reviews have been mixed: most say it's great value for money, but caution that it may not be the safest car on the road. Others believe it's safer than the wobbly three-wheeled auto-rickshaw. Next year will tell whether Nano is a path-breaker or a risky gimmick. Customers seem to know what they want. The Nano's order books - more than 200,000 orders and counting - are full. Newsweek magazine, meanwhile, worries about potential "global gridlock" caused by Nanos and their ilk.
INDIA'S OSCAR MOMENT
In the days before the Big Hype, Bhanu Athaiya,a Bollywood costume designer, picked up India's first Oscar for costume design for her work in Gandhi. That was in 1982. Nine years later, the celebrated auteur Satyajit Ray was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, joining such greats as Charlie Chaplin, Jean Renoir and Akira Kurosawa.
But India went truly Oscar-crazy only in 2009 when music director AR Rahman and sound recordist Resul Pookutty picked up a golden statuette each for their work in Slumdog Millionaire.
The redoubtable Rahman - dubbed the Mozart of Madras, where he lives and works - is India's finest music composer and a brilliant crossover musician. Pookutty's triumph showed how Indian movie technicians are today on a par with the best of the world - even the worst Bollywood tripe these days has a sheen and technical verve which is impressive.
AN ACCOLADE FOR INDIAN CRICKET
India defeated Sri Lanka at home to become Test cricket's reigning champions. The team's awesome batting line-up is difficult to match. The bowling has improved vastly. The fielding can be infuriatingly inconsistent though.
In a country where cricketers are worshipped like gods and are the highest paid in the world, India cannot afford to slip up. There seems to be talent aplenty: hungry, young players coming up from smaller towns and villages are flocking to the game. The only threat to India's cricketing fortunes, say critics, comes from the country's notoriously fractious and inept cricket officialdom and the riches of the shorter Twenty20 game. Will mammon crush nationalism in what a sociologist called an "Indian game accidentally discovered by the British"? Watch this space.
OVER THE MOON
When India pulled the plug on its inaugural Moon mission in August, 10 months after it was launched, some questioned whether it had "delivered the good science" it had promised. Two months later, Chandrayaan, as the mission was called, was hailed as a "grand success" after helping find evidence of water on the Moon. The mission cost less than $100m and fetched an enormous amount of goodwill for the country's bright space scientists. One newspaper crowed, One Big Step for India, A Giant Leap for Mankind. This time, few minded the hyperbole.
AN INDIAN ENRON
It had all the makings of an Indian Enron - one of the world's largest software companies, Satyam, found itself embroiled in India's biggest-ever corporate fraud. Its founder admitted exaggerating its cash reserves by nearly $1bn. That was in January. Thousands of jobs, millions of dollars worth of shareholders wealth and India's corporate reputation was at stake. The government waded in and appointed directors to run the beleaguered company.
Four months later, the fraud-hit firm found a suitor - a local company called Tech Mahindra - which picked up a stake of more than 30% in the company. And in June, the company, amazingly, announced a profit of more than $10m.
Rebuilding Satyam is a work in progress. But the fact that the company managed to stay afloat and fight back despite its founder and eight others facing charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery for stealing millions of dollars from the company is a testament to the spirit of its workers and a steely resolve by the government-appointed directors who refused to let the company crash.
On the one hand, some stability returned to politics with the Congress party managing a fairly comfortable majority in the general elections. After the horrors of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, India actually went through 2009 without a terror strike. The economy appeared to have weathered the worldwide recession. Indian science and cricket scaled new heights.
On the other hand, the year held out ominous portents - Maoist rebels are threatening to go to war with the Indian state; food inflation is threatening to negate the gains of improved growth; and, egged on by the movement for Telangana, homegrown separatism is rearing its head again. There is growing suspicion that the country's natural resources are being bartered away cheaply. All this - and more - could turn 2010 into an extremely restive year.
Here's my pick of the defining events of 2009:
THE END OF HARDLINE HINDU NATIONALISM?
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) proudly calls itself the "party with a difference". By the end of the year, India's main opposition was a party with many differences - within. When it was trounced by Congress at the general election, its fortunes hit rock bottom. Since then nothing has gone right: its leaders have bickered bitterly and openly; and one of them was banished , ostensibly for writing a book on Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
Party president and paterfamilias LK Advani looked jaded, and as the year wound down he handed over the baton as leader of the parliamentary party to a younger colleague. He also handed over the party presidency.
Whatever the changes, the BJP appeared lost. Critics say that ideologically, the party is past its sell-by date - still making noises about building temples, refusing to come to terms with the fact that India has grown up and strident Hindu nationalism has lost its vote-catching lustre.
Others say the BJP's only hope appears to lie in reinventing itself as a modern day, right-of-centre, Indian Conservative party. But observers find the leadership uninspiring. They say the party's best chance of revival is a dramatic slide in Congress fortunes.
RAHUL GANDHI'S SECOND COMING
He began as a gawky politician with a disarming smile that won him more female admirers than serious followers. But Rahul Gandhi, the latest scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, showed some serious political mettle this year.
Travelling through the northern Indian heartland - especially in Uttar Pradesh - Mr Gandhi quietly worked on rejuvenating his party's grassroots network and attracting younger talent, his supporters say. His party staged a comeback of sorts in Uttar Pradesh - a return from virtual politician oblivion after two decades.
Mr Gandhi has his work cut out for him - revitalising Congress and making it less of a family enterprise. Apparently he believes the party should go it alone, bucking the current narrative of coalition politics. Most analysts feel he may be wrong on this, and that coalition politics is here to stay in a complex country like India. 2010 will prove whether Mr Gandhi can help maintain his party's momentum - and even perhaps take up the cabinet position which he has repeatedly been offered.
BEATING THE RECESSION
India, by and large, escaped the ravages of the global recession. Its conservative banking system and lower exposure to the world economy possibly saved the day. But to be fair, thousands lost jobs and companies stopped hiring and slashed costs. Spending plummeted and the property bubble burst.
Now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is holding out the hope of slightly higher growth - 7% plus - in this fiscal year. Companies have begun hiring again and spending is up. However, many economists believe that India's growth is not pulling enough people out of abject poverty, while deepening the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Even if India hits double-digit growth like China, there will be no reason to party when a third of its people live in dire poverty and milions of children go underfed. Why does an increasingly rich country treat its poor so shabbily?
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL?
When Tata Motors unveiled the world's cheapest car, everyone sat up and took notice. The buzz around the rear-engined, four-passenger, 624cc Nano, whose basic model costs $2155, had been immense - one magazine wrote that it embodied a "contrarian philosophy of smaller, lighter, cheaper" transport.
The Nano is a nifty little car all right. User reviews have been mixed: most say it's great value for money, but caution that it may not be the safest car on the road. Others believe it's safer than the wobbly three-wheeled auto-rickshaw. Next year will tell whether Nano is a path-breaker or a risky gimmick. Customers seem to know what they want. The Nano's order books - more than 200,000 orders and counting - are full. Newsweek magazine, meanwhile, worries about potential "global gridlock" caused by Nanos and their ilk.
INDIA'S OSCAR MOMENT
In the days before the Big Hype, Bhanu Athaiya,a Bollywood costume designer, picked up India's first Oscar for costume design for her work in Gandhi. That was in 1982. Nine years later, the celebrated auteur Satyajit Ray was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, joining such greats as Charlie Chaplin, Jean Renoir and Akira Kurosawa.
But India went truly Oscar-crazy only in 2009 when music director AR Rahman and sound recordist Resul Pookutty picked up a golden statuette each for their work in Slumdog Millionaire.
The redoubtable Rahman - dubbed the Mozart of Madras, where he lives and works - is India's finest music composer and a brilliant crossover musician. Pookutty's triumph showed how Indian movie technicians are today on a par with the best of the world - even the worst Bollywood tripe these days has a sheen and technical verve which is impressive.
AN ACCOLADE FOR INDIAN CRICKET
India defeated Sri Lanka at home to become Test cricket's reigning champions. The team's awesome batting line-up is difficult to match. The bowling has improved vastly. The fielding can be infuriatingly inconsistent though.
In a country where cricketers are worshipped like gods and are the highest paid in the world, India cannot afford to slip up. There seems to be talent aplenty: hungry, young players coming up from smaller towns and villages are flocking to the game. The only threat to India's cricketing fortunes, say critics, comes from the country's notoriously fractious and inept cricket officialdom and the riches of the shorter Twenty20 game. Will mammon crush nationalism in what a sociologist called an "Indian game accidentally discovered by the British"? Watch this space.
OVER THE MOON
When India pulled the plug on its inaugural Moon mission in August, 10 months after it was launched, some questioned whether it had "delivered the good science" it had promised. Two months later, Chandrayaan, as the mission was called, was hailed as a "grand success" after helping find evidence of water on the Moon. The mission cost less than $100m and fetched an enormous amount of goodwill for the country's bright space scientists. One newspaper crowed, One Big Step for India, A Giant Leap for Mankind. This time, few minded the hyperbole.
AN INDIAN ENRON
It had all the makings of an Indian Enron - one of the world's largest software companies, Satyam, found itself embroiled in India's biggest-ever corporate fraud. Its founder admitted exaggerating its cash reserves by nearly $1bn. That was in January. Thousands of jobs, millions of dollars worth of shareholders wealth and India's corporate reputation was at stake. The government waded in and appointed directors to run the beleaguered company.
Four months later, the fraud-hit firm found a suitor - a local company called Tech Mahindra - which picked up a stake of more than 30% in the company. And in June, the company, amazingly, announced a profit of more than $10m.
Rebuilding Satyam is a work in progress. But the fact that the company managed to stay afloat and fight back despite its founder and eight others facing charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery for stealing millions of dollars from the company is a testament to the spirit of its workers and a steely resolve by the government-appointed directors who refused to let the company crash.
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