50, AND NOT DONE

Click Here
1947-2008-India-Roundup

The slums are still there, but Kolkata’s ‘Saint of the Gutters’ has gone. Eighty-five years old, 50 years of washing the sick and comforting the dying, and yet she was not ready. On September 5, her heart, which had been functioning on a pacemaker since 1989, finally gave up, too weak after a succession of heart attacks in the last few years and too tired after a lifetime of loving. She died as she lived, quietly, and as questions about her canonization were revived, she left behind an icon that no human heart would deny.






“BY NATURE I AM A SILENT PERSON. I WILL TALK LESS AND DELIVER MORE.”
Inder Kumar Gujral

A replacement candidate for prime minister to start with and the man at the helm of India’s celebration of 50 years of nationhood, Gujral found himself embroiled in problems when he took over from H.D. Deve Gowda. His efforts towards better India-Pakistan relations were lost amid the rumbling of imminent collapse at home. When parts of the Jain Commission report were first published in india today, implicating key dmk members in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the United Front-Congress relationship got severed. The Congress withdrew support and Gujral resigned.

FIRST CUT

• Kalpana Chawla became the first Indian woman in space when she blasted off aboard nasa’s space shuttle Columbia on November 19. On her first mission as an astronaut, Chawla traveled over 6.5 million miles in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 375 hours in space.

DID YOU KNOW

• The Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme tax amnesty initiative brought Rs 33,000 crore to the government from declarations by 4, 66,031 persons.

38 BULLETS, ONE BODY

The cold-blooded murder of cassette king Gulshan Kumar on August 12 was a grim reminder of Bollywood’s dangerous flirtation with the underworld. Allegedly shot for having refused to pay extortion money to the dons, on that fateful day, his Rs 350-crore Empire came to nothing as gunmen pumped 38 bullets into his body.





A NEW GODDESS

“Her narrative crackles with riddles and yet tells its tale quite clearly,” said Gillian Beer, chair-women of the judges who awarded Arundhati Roy the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things.

Mic-testing Times

In the 50^th year of India’s Independence, political debate took on another dimension altogether. In the Uttar Pradesh legislature, the symbolism of the microphone as a weapon was realized as politicians were unable to express themselves in words. With parliamentarians hurling not just abuse but also chairs at one another, India watched, disillusioned by the ungainly show.






ELSEWHERE…

• Diana, Princess of Wales (above), was taken to a hospital after a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris. She was pronounced dead at 4 a.m.
• The United Kingdom formally handed over Hong Kong to China.
• The last of China’s major Maoist revolutionaries, Deng Xiaoping, died at the age of 92.
• In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announced the successful cloning of the first adult sheep, Dolly, who was born in July 1996.

1,057 people died through the year due to communal violence while another 197 died as a result of bomb blasts. Road accidents claimed another 50,975 lives, while over 350 were killed in more than 20,000 fires across the country.

Courtesy By India Today