Indian achievers

• India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 68, was sworn in for a second term in May this year, after his party, the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), won a landslide majority in the general elections. The party and its allies won 354 seats in India’s 545-member lower house, called the Lok Sabha. With this victory, Modi became the first Indian leader since 1971 to secure a single party majority in back-to-back elections. The PM then made BJP’s President Amit Shah India’s Home Minister, Rajnath Singh was given the defence portfolio, and the country got its first-ever woman Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Notably, Modi retained his electoral seat of Varanasi by nearly half a million votes.

• India ended its South Asian Games campaign with a best-ever medal haul of 312 – 174 gold, 93 silver and 45 bronze after ten days of competitions, in the 13th edition of South Asian Games held in Nepal. India has topped the medal tally of every South Asian Games since its inception in 1984, and surpassed the 309 (189 gold, 90 silver and 30 bronze) it had won in the previous edition in Guwahati and Shillong in 2016. But the number of gold India won this time was 15 less than the 2016 edition. India had sent 487 athletes in this edition.

• Indian woman shuttler, P V Sindhu, in August, became the first Indian to win badminton World Championships gold by beating familiar rival Nozomi Okuhara of Japan 21-7 21-7 in the summit clash that lasted just 38 minutes. With this, Sindhu, took revenge of her epic loss two-years back against the same opponent, in a match that went down as one of the greatest battles in badminton history.

• With weather helping Australia secure a draw in Sydney in the fourth test, India completed a historic cricket test series win [2-1] down under in January this year. The wins came in tests in Adelaide and Melbourne. With this India retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. This is arguably the greatest achievement of Virat Kohli’s captaincy. Australia, asked to follow on after conceding a first innings lead of 322 runs on day four, finished 6-0 in their second innings. India have failed to win a Test series in Australia in 11 previous attempts.

• Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize this year “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” Banerjee, 58, was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University, and is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2003, he founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and has also served on the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

• India’s second lunar mission

  In another milestone for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), India launched Chandrayaan-2, its second lunar mission, in July this year. It consisted of a lunar orbiter, the Vikram lander, and the Pragyan lunar rover, all of which were developed in India. The objective was to map and study the variations in lunar surface composition, as well as the location and abundance of lunar water. Chandrayaan-2 reached the Moon’s orbit on August 20, began orbital positioning manoeuvres for landing Vikram. However, the lander deviated from its intended trajectory starting at 2.1 kilometres altitude, and had a hard landing. The Failure Analysis Committee concluded that the crash was caused by a software glitch.

Balakot air strikes at terror camps in Pakistan

India, early this year, launched air strikes against militants in Pakistani territory, in a major escalation of tensions between the two countries. Indian authorties said the strikes targeted a training camp of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) group in Balakot, which is in Pakistan’s north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. They also accused Pakistan of allowing militant groups to operate on its territory, adding that Pakistani security agencies played a role in the suicide attack on February 14, which was claimed by JeM and killed 40 Indian troops. These were the first such strikes launched across the line of control – the de facto border between the to countries – since the 1971 war. Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told a news conference then that “the strikes had killed a large number of militants, including commanders, and had avoided civilian casualties”.

Top court settles Ayodhya dispute

In November, India’s Supreme Court – five-judge Constitutional bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi – delivered its long-awaited verdict on the disputed land in Ayodhya. The case – one of the longest running in the world with over seven decades of arguments in various courts of India – relate to cross-appeals filed by both the Hindu and Muslim sides, challenging the 2010 verdict of Allahabad High Court. That verdict divided the 2.77 acres of disputed land three-ways, which the top court said “was wrong”. The Supreme Court in its verdict said, “The entire disputed land in Ayodhya will be given for temple construction. The Central Government will formulate a scheme for forming a trust within the next three months, which will then take up the task of temple construction. Ownership of the disputed land will also shift – from the Centre – to the trust once it is set-up. Government will allot five acres of land to Muslims at a prominent place in Ayodhya for building a mosque.” The court while dismissing the petition of Nirmohi Akhara for sherbaiti rights, added that the Akhara might be a part of the trust to be set-up for temple construction.

Article 370 and 35(A) revoked

In August, the Modi Government revoked the twin articles which gave the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir special provisions and limited autonomy. While some provisions of the Article 370 had been diluted over time; Article 35A had remained unchanged till August 2019. With these changes, which came into effect on October 31, Jammu and Kashmir is now a Union Territory with legislature; where Ladakh is also given a UT status, which has been a long-standing demand of people of that region.

India bans triple talaq

In August, India banned “triple talaq,” which was a way Muslim men divorce their wives by saying the Arabic word for divorce three times. With the new law in place, a man who imposes an instant divorce on his wife faces up to three years in prison as per the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill of 2019. The custom is already banned in more than 20 Muslim countries, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. After the bill’s passage, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “Parliament abolishes Triple Talaq and corrects a historic wrong done to Muslim women.”

India’s growth slowing

With manufacturing contracting, investment being weak, and consumption low, India’s GDP growth has hit a 26-quarter low at 4.5 percent for the second quarter of this year [July-September], according to the data released by the country’s National Statistical Office in December. After these figures, GDP growth rate for the first half of this fiscal, is now at 4.8 percent as against 7.5 percent in the same period last year. Moreover, the growth rate has weakened for the sixth consecutive quarter now. Even more worrying is the figure for the nominal GDP growth rate, which accounts for inflation. It now stands at 6.1 percent in this quarter, down from 12 percent in the corresponding period last year. This is mainly due to the manufacturing sector contracting by 1 percent, and agriculture growing at only 2.1 percent. Investment has also grown just 1 percent in the second quarter this year.

-Gaurav Sharma