E-Paper
Beauty Without Purpose as Miss Indias stumble
The drought through most of summer saw thousands die, while the stalling of the peace process in Sri Lanka was a setback.
(Amit Banerjee)
The bubble just had to burst. After the magical 90s when it seemed there was nothing a Miss India couldn't win, it's difficult to imagine what she can. It was on the whole a year of bitter disappointments as Indian beauties lurched from one poor performance to another.
Nikita Anand began 2003 on a dismal note in July by failing to qualify for the semifinals at the Miss Universe pageant in Panama. It was for the first time in 11 years that India failed to make it to the last fifteen at the contest, won by Sushmita Sen in 1994 and Lara Dutta in 2000. While the 19-year-old Delhi damsel it was ill health and not nerves that led to the Panama drubbing, there was no such problems for Amelia Laisha Vega Polanco, 18, from the Dominican Republic who took top honours.
India's fortunes seemed to be turning when Shonali Nagrani, winner of the Miss India-International title this year, was named the first runner-up at the Miss International 2003 pageant in Tokyo on Oct. 8, becoming the first Indian to rank at the event. But the joy was to be short-lived.
It was curtains for Shwetha Vijay Nair at the Miss Earth pageant in Quezon City, Philippines on November 9. The 23-year-old 5'10" Keralite beauty had to be satisfied with a consolation 'Essential Beauty of the Earth' title.
But the final blow came towards the end of the year. Despite being one of the favourites to win the Miss World title in the Chinese resort town of Sanya, Miss India-World Ami Vashi finished 3rd Runners-up at the finals on December 6. The crown instead went to 19-year-old Miss Ireland Rosanna Davison.
Miss Universe 2003 / Miss World 2003
In parched India hopes run dry
(Nivedita Mishra)
The dams of India, which Nehru so famously called the "new temples of India", don't seem to have fulfilled all the promises their makers made, after all. Though the monsoons came, drought this year was as severe, or maybe even worse, than the year before. While most Indians are used to rural India bearing the brunt, increasingly urban India is waking up to reality as city after city faced acute water shortages.
Apart from parts of the northeast, no part of the country was spared with Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Orissa, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu facing the brunt of the attack.
Large parts of India sweltered under an ongoing heat wave that has killed at least 1,246 people in three weeks and sparked deadly forest fires in the northern Himalayan foothills. Andhra Pradesh alone saw the highest toll with at least 1,139 people dead from heat strokes and dehydration. The death toll is the highest since 1998, when more than 2,500 people died from intense heat.
CII in a conference titled Water Management: Public-Private Partnership, which was inaugurated by Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, said the need of the hour was to aim at sensitising people and developing a broader political consensus on the issue.