Newsmakers of 2000 - 2009

First of all, I don't buy the argument that decade has ended; it will end in 2010. I say so because there was no zeroth year, i.e., there was never a date like January 1, 0000. I am sure it started with Jan 1, 0001. So, if we count 10 years starting from the latter count, then decade starts from 2001 and ends with 2010. Well, since everyone is hailing it as an end of decade, so it be!

Here I have to tried to list of some of the highlights of the past decade and will try to break from the clutter of general stuff like Wall Street collapse or terrorism (read 9/11, Mumbai attacks et al). It is not that I don't feel that they were defining moments in the past years, but enough has been documented about them and I wont be doing justice by writing on them. So, here are my personal top-10-top-of-the-mind-recall..

1. Amitabh Bachchan - If the pre-2000 years were his worst years, then 2000 was the year of his comeback. Thanks to Kaun Banega Crorepati, it helped him to come out of difficult financial situation and also a comeback in Bollywood. He acted with some big names in Mohabbatein, Aks, Ek Rishta, Aankhen, Khakee and above all Black, which earned him a National Award for his performance.

2. Google- Though started in 1998, it gained prominence starting 2000 or 2001. The company has replaced the word 'search; from everyone's dictionary now. And the company is not known in search only; its other offerings have been instant hit and made life easy for millions across the globe. Be it GMail conversation or Google Talk simple interface or picasa to upload pics or Google Maps...you name it and its there.

3. Roger Federer - What started with a victory in Wimbledon 2003, no one thought that FedEx (as he is popularly known) will dominate Men's tennis as he did it till 2008-09. Though the grip seems to be loosening a bit now, I personally feel he will achieve a Grand Slam in a calendar year.

4. Twenty20 - How can we forget this new format of the sport of cricket?! When ODIs were introduced, people were thrilled to see the new format. But with fast paced life, even an ODI seemed to consume a lot of time and the interest in the game was diminishing. Since, need is the mother of invention, T20 was invented to bring back the interest in the sport. Involvement of players has made ODIs an high scoring affair and increased the result percentage in tests!

5. Airbus A380 - An engineering marvel! It made 850 people (all-economy) flying possible. Though marred by continuous delays and other issues surrounding it, no one can take away the sheen of the biggest bird in the sky today. Waiting to sit in it some time soon :)

6. iPhone - Only an Apple could have created such a hype for something like a cellphone which forced people to queue up outside its stores way before the stores were to be opened. The 'touch' experience was the USP and Apple made us aware that even aesthetics matter in something like a cellphone. On similar lines, I would say even Moto Razr took the world by storm when launched. Razr was the world's largest cellphone in aggregate terms for a long time, only to be beaten by iPhone.

7. E. Sreedharan - The person behind Konkan Railways and the Delhi Metro, seemingly impossible tasks given the constraints. Though Konkan Railways opened in 1998, he shot to fame after taking up the herculean task of building metro in a well-established city of Delhi. More than that, the project is running within and ahead of schedule and even surviving the pressure to complete a larger network before the Commonwealth Games 2010 in the city.

8. Telecom companies - Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, DoCoMo, Idea and the list goes on and on. The sudden mobile explosion that took place in the country is because of presence of such companies. Though the industry is regulated, the prices are unthinkable when compared to world standards! 1p/sec or 50p/min is like half-a-dollar for a minute and that too for a STD call. No wonder, we have more mobile phones than land line phones and this helped many sections of the society as they are used not only for talking but also for information dissemination. For example, farmers get wholesale prices, fishermen receive weather updates and an investor can easily track market movements...the benefits are many :)

9. Capt.Gopinath - He wanted every Indian fly and most of them do fly now, if not everyone. The pioneer of Low-fare airlines in the country, made air travel affordable for many. It also made Indian Railways to improve it services and in the end, it is the consumers who are benefiting the most.

10. IIMs - This is a little biased, you can say. But if we really think of it, then media just gives too much attention to whatever IIMs do...be it CAT leaked in 2003 or opening of new IIM or the summer or final placements or the salary figures and above the online CAT...rather its fiasco :P I feel there are more pressing issues than salaries being offered in IIMs which require media attention.