1. Bid Goodbye to a Bizarre Year
Ending the year like a millennial, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram wrote in the Indian Express about the bizarre statements that dominated the news media in 2017, which were laughed off but were no laughing matter for they were made by state and community leaders.
He too was left despondent, ashamed and angry as the ‘dangerous pronouncements’, ‘foolish diktats’ and ‘sinister motives’ behind the statements much like the rest of the country but then chose to laugh it off.
The Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, required its employees to fill a marital declaration form. The employees were asked to declare their virginity and the number of wives they are married to. It was not clear whether the form applied to male employees only.
2. Goodbye, 2017
On the last day of the year, Tavleen Singh bids adieu to the year by recapping how the year was for Prime Minister Modi and what he must do to retain his job in the 2019 elections, in the Indian Express.
She says that even though he started out the year strong by winning Uttar Pradesh, the “loss” in Gujarat has even his most ardent fans worried for the upcoming state polls.
If Modi had also shown that he was a conservative when it came to economic policies it is possible that we would by now have seen the sort of boom we saw in the Indian economy after licence raj ended in the Nineties...It is horrible that a child should die of starvation in Jharkhand and that the CM should instruct his officials to pretend this did not happen.
She said that it’s time for the BJP to show ordinary Indians it’s here to serve them and not just to rule.
3. Presumed Innocent
Using the example of cricket and how law and justice shape the game to an unusual degree, Mukul Kesavan writes on the workings of a “rule bound world” in his column in The Telegraph.
As the umpire and technology based third umpire get the batsman out with a narrow range of circumstance, has an ad hoc recourse to technology led to unintended consequences?
The moral of the story is that well-meaning reform spurred on by technological advance can lead to unintended consequences. This doesn’t mean being Luddite but it does mean that our cumulative experience of technological innovation –whether it is the DRS or electronic voting machines or biometric identification – ought to temper and inform our engagement with it
4. No Harasser is Safe Anywhere, Anymore
After the viral #MeToo campaign that brought out thousands of stories of women getting sexually harassed, Lalita Panicker writes in Hindustan Times about how no harasser can hide anywhere anymore.
In India, men comment on the colour of a woman’s skin, her clothes, her appearance, which don’t constitute physical harassment but definitely crosses lines.
Harassment in public spaces often leads to women dropping out of the workforce, something India can ill-afford...Women in the unorganised sector have no safety net at all and are vulnerable to all sorts of abuse and harassment. The prospect of the loss of income and jobs ensures a conspiracy of silence.
The least the government can do is ensure sexual harassment committees in organisations are duty bound by law in their functioning and make stalking a non-bailable offence.
5. A Roller-Coaster Year
In his piece for the Indian Express, Meghnad Desai recalls the disruptive year that 2017 has been with Donald Trump assuming office, threatening nuclear war with North Korea, Europe’s resurgence of right-wing nationalism, BJP’s UP triumph and the lost shine of the Indian GDP. He writes that Indian politics has never been so centralised since the days of Indira Gandhi in 1971.
When Nitish Kumar broke the Mahagathbandhan, it seemed like 2019 was in the bag for the BJP... Modi will have to work his magic through 2018 and then till general election in 2019 to secure a second majority term... Curiously it still remains the case that people think of the government as a one-man band. This is not just in a general election but every state election as well. The issue every time and everywhere is Modi.
6. Testing Times Ahead for Journalists
Harish Khare writes about the road that lies ahead for journalists after a year that didn’t end on a note of celebration or of despondency, in his year-ending column in The Tribune. He writes about people bemoaning the total collapse of civic authorities while insatiable greed plagues institutions and the economy hangs in a tender balance and all through which, the English news channels have given up the pretence of fairness.
The social media instigates outrage, aids and abets a culture of denunciation and demonising. Civilised conversations are no longer possible. We have managed to poison the wells of reasonableness in our political society... Those who resist the consuming demands of the politicians are denounced as lacking in deshbhakti, or are dubbed as anti-national, and simply pronounced as biased. The rabble is incited and instigated to invoke Bharat Mata and assault anyone who dares to dissent from the officially prescribed orthodoxy.
7. To Each, His or Her Own Singer or Song
“When life maims or hurts you, seek refuge in music”, is how historian Ramachandra Guha chooses to end the taxing year that 2017 has been, for his weekly Hindustan Times column. He finds his ‘perfect happiness’ in listening to the alap of an Ali Abkar Khan-Nikhil Bannerjee jugalbandhi in Manj Khamaj.
When politics and politicians disappoint and divide, music and art can cheer and console. In the last paragraph of her book, Claire Tomalin quotes her hero, Samuel Pepys, who insisted that music is ‘productive of a pleasure that no state of life, public or private, secular or sacred, no difference of age or season; no temper of mind or condition... renders either improper, untimely, or unentertaining. Witness the universal gusto we see it followed with, wherever to be found’.
8. Hunting Down the Opposition
BJP which has now become larger than life has adopted a “join us or we will hunt you down” approach when it comes to dealing with the opposition, as Saba Naqvi writes for her column in The Tribune. Naqvi writes that while the Emergency was a blot on the democracy which the Opposition and media fought against, the hunting down of Opposition now isn’t seen as out of the ordinary by media anymore.
She lists out all those who defected from their parties to the BJP and were “absolved of sin”, who previously had certain blots against their name.
The BJP also runs the most expensive election campaigns in India’s history. Where does the money come from? It’s possible that God delivers the cash to them and no corruption or quid pro quo is involved.
9. 2017 – The Best Part Was Learning New Words
Taking a cue from Shashi Tharoor’s eloquent and elegant Twitter timeline, Karan Thapar reflects upon the new words he (and possibly many others) learnt in 2017, in his weekly Hindustan Times column.
The sort of conversation which is utterly worthless and best avoided is a ‘nonversation’. And if, like me you’ve become fascinated with WhatsApp, then the little twinge of excitement when the phone tings to inform you have a message is called ‘textpectation’...I also discovered that things I thought had no name actually do. For instance, the space between your eyebrows is called a ‘glabella’, the wired cage that holds the cork in a champagne bottle is called an ‘agraffe’ and when you combine an exclamation mark with a question mark (like this ?!) it’s an ‘interrobang’.
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