Year in review

Here is the list of people who made news in 2009.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

HT Image

It was a tricky moment in August when our leader in safari suit published a book on ‘their’ leader in Qaraqul hat. Jaswant Singh’s Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence led to his expulsion from the Bharatiya Janata Party and, in a flash of political expedience, made him don the Gorkha cap. Who could have thought that six decades after his death, Muhammad Ali Jinnah would affect the history of not only India’s largest opposition party, but also one of its wannabe states?

Singh should have known better — even L.K. Advani wasn’t spared when he ‘praised’ the Baba-e-Qaum. Expect to hear more on Pakistan’s founder next February, when his daughter Dina Wadia’s case for her rights to Mumbai’s Jinnah House comes up again in court.

Hafiz Saeed

This was the year the firewalls erected by Pakistan around Lashkar-e-Tayyeba to keep the outfit out of the West’s hit-list began to crumble. It was the militant group closest to the Pakistani military. Lashkar chief Hafeez Saeed may have been released in December by a Pakistani court, but his role in the Mumbai terror attacks is very clear, thanks to the confession made by gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab. Maybe we will see the exchange of a few more Indo-Pak dossiers in 2010.

One of the biggest political surprises of the year was the severe setback to Lalu Prasad Yadav in the 15th Lok Sabha polls. Nineteen years after he became chief minister of India’s third-largest state, the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief was decisively out of power. The RJD-Congress alliance came unstuck over seat-sharing, leading to a Janata Dal (United)-Bharatiya Janata Party sweep in Bihar. Lalu himself lost to Ranjan Yadav of the JD(U) from Pataliputra, but managed to beat BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy from Saran.

Jarnail Singh

The ‘shoe of protest’ was among global phenomenons that arrived in India this year. An unassuming reporter who covered the defence beat, Jarnail Singh, 36, threw himself into the limelight last April after tossing his Reebok shoe at Home Minister

P. Chidambaram. Singh, a reporter with Dainik Jagran, was protesting the CBI’s clean chit to Jagdish Tytler in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. His shoe missed its target, and he was fired from his job three months after the incident.

Chander Mohan

Oh what a difference a year makes. In November 2008, Chander Mohan, deputy chief minister of Haryana, eloped with Anuradha Bali, a former assistant advocate-general of the state. They converted to Islam, changed their names to Chand and Fiza, and got married. By the time Valentine’s Day 2009 had rolled in, the marriage was on the rocks. He went back to his family and Fiza was left alone to take part in the reality TV show Iss Jungle se Mujhe Bachao (Save Me from this Jungle).

Shera

With the start of the Commonwealth Games countdown, images of Shera, the mascot, sprung up all over — but not before an image makeover. The earlier Shera was lean and lanky, and wore vests and loose shorts. The new one is looking more youthful in T-shirt and shorts, and is flashing a victory sign.

“We decided to change it as we thought that it did not reflect the young, confident Indian. The idea was to make it more athletic with loads of attitude,” said Sangeeta Welinkar of the Games’ organising committee. Suresh Kalmadi, a confident Indian who is chairman of the organising committee, spent much of the year trying to convince foreign experts that all was well with the Games’ preparations. He hasn’t quite succeeded yet.

Edgar Hernandez

When 1,300 of the 3,000 residents of La Gloria, a hillside village in Mexico, were struck by flu this March, health workers collected 35 throat swabs to diagnose the cause. On April 2, all except one sample tested positive for H2N3, a seasonal flu virus. Five-year-old Edgar Hernandez was the only one found infected by an influenza strain they had never heard of — A H1N1. It soon became a global pandemic.

Two continents and two oceans away in India, H1N1 infected 24,707 and caused 823 deaths over the year. Since humans had no natural immunity against the new strain, many quickly succumbed. But the good news is that the virus is becoming ‘milder’. The World Health Organization’s prediction of a more deadly “second wave” of the epidemic proved to be a
non-starter compared to the summer savagery. As for Hernandez, the flu’s first known victim, he’s now back in school.

Meira Kumar

After a stentorian Brahmin, Somnath Chatterjee, Lok Sabha got a soft-spoken Dalit, Meira Kumar, as its Speaker — the first woman ever in the post. A five-time member of the Lok Sabha, Kumar is the daughter of former deputy prime minister Jagjivan Ram. She also holds the rare record of having won elections from three states.

Kumar, 64, started her political career in 1984 by winning the Lok Sabha seat from Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh. In 2009, she was the water resources minister for a short period before being elected Speaker.

Omar Abdullah

Eleven years ago, when Omar Abdullah announced his decision to join politics, his mother Mollie threw a fit of rage. “He will join politics only over my dead body,” she told her husband, Farooq Abdullah. Well, this January 5, a 38-year-old Omar took oath as the youngest chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

It’s been a long, emotional journey to the seat. His “I’m a Muslim and an Indian” speech in Parliament during 2008’s trust vote made him a hit. This July, he didn’t hide his emotions in state assembly when the opposition alleged his involvement in a sex scandal. He put in his papers to the Governor, who rejected it. And the ‘journey’ continued.

YS Rajasekhara Reddy

Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, 60, had just completed 110 days in office in his second term when his helicopter crashed on September 2. The chopper he had boarded in Hyderabad to go to Chittoor went missing before his body was retrieved from the forests of Nallamala. K. Rosaiah was appointed in his place despite protests from supporters of his son Jaganmohan. The Telengana genie, which YSR had bottled, got out again.

Asterix

By Toutatis, it’s been 50 years since Gaulish chieftain Vercingetorix threw down his shield at Julius Caesar’s feet — and the world is still rolling in laughter. It’s the frame that announced the arrival of Asterix comics in an edition of Pilote, a French magazine.

Some 27 books later, our pocket-sized hero and his super-sized friend Obelix made their way to India on a magic carpet. By then, with translations into more than 100 languages, the world was their cauldron.

Ratan Naval Tata

The patriarch of the country’s largest business conglomerate realised a long-cherished dream this year — and it might be the most lasting legacy of his illustrious career. Fifty years down the line, Indians may forget that it was Ratan Naval Tata who ushered the unwieldy Tata Group, that now comprises 114 companies spread over seven sectors and 85 countries, into the 21st century. But they are unlikely to lose sight of the fact that the Nano, the world’s cheapest car, was his brainchild.

Tata gave legacy-hunters food for thought earlier this month when he let out that he’s looking for a successor to the chair of Tata Sons, the holding company. His tenure ends in 2012, but the retirement age of Tata Sons directors is 75. And Ratan Naval turns 72 this December 28.