<p class="bodytext">A new year is the time to look back on the past and forward to the future. Primed as we are to the calendar that rules our sense of time, any day is as good as the New Year day, but the vantage point of the beginning of the year gives a common frame for memories and hopes. The engagement with the New Year can be personal where every person has a unique past and future, with varying experiences and expectations. But it is also collective where there is greater commonality as perspectives are based on family, nation or the world as such, though judgements would differ. At the personal level, there is happiness about what went well and regret about what did not or went awry. Resolutions are made, often to be broken, but the unbroken truth about the New Year moment is that it carries within it the human privilege to look forward and hope, which has sustained mankind all through.</p>.Revellers ring in New Year in style across district.<p class="bodytext">When the country steps into the New Year, it will look at the past year as one in which democracy triumphed and the republic completed 75 years. The people reduced the ruling party at the Centre, which was too sure of itself, to the leader of an alliance dependent on other parties. They also showed that they are not always guided by the aura around leaders. The Constitution was a running theme. The guiding charter of the republic held itself up, though it has been challenged and bruised in the past. The Opposition parties were not able to sustain the momentum they gained in the general elections and are still struggling. There are concerns such as the pressures on civil and human rights and on institutions, and speeches and actions that seek to normalise bias and discrimination. The stock market has thrived, but money is dearer and poverty is a daily reality for a very large number of people. Even with all its challenges, the nation is young and hopeful in a world growing old.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The world is riven by two terrible wars, and its inability to stop them shows that the global community and its institutions have lost the moral and political power and authority to tame even rogue nations. A new President will assume charge of the world’s top power, triggering fears and apprehensions about the future. The other superpower, weakened by a slowing economy, is unpredictable and unreliable. Climate change is real and closing in on the world which still has not agreed on how to cope with it. The sky is bright and cloudy on the New Year eve and here is wishing that it will be more bright than cloudy in the year that has just dawned.</p>
<p class="bodytext">A new year is the time to look back on the past and forward to the future. Primed as we are to the calendar that rules our sense of time, any day is as good as the New Year day, but the vantage point of the beginning of the year gives a common frame for memories and hopes. The engagement with the New Year can be personal where every person has a unique past and future, with varying experiences and expectations. But it is also collective where there is greater commonality as perspectives are based on family, nation or the world as such, though judgements would differ. At the personal level, there is happiness about what went well and regret about what did not or went awry. Resolutions are made, often to be broken, but the unbroken truth about the New Year moment is that it carries within it the human privilege to look forward and hope, which has sustained mankind all through.</p>.Revellers ring in New Year in style across district.<p class="bodytext">When the country steps into the New Year, it will look at the past year as one in which democracy triumphed and the republic completed 75 years. The people reduced the ruling party at the Centre, which was too sure of itself, to the leader of an alliance dependent on other parties. They also showed that they are not always guided by the aura around leaders. The Constitution was a running theme. The guiding charter of the republic held itself up, though it has been challenged and bruised in the past. The Opposition parties were not able to sustain the momentum they gained in the general elections and are still struggling. There are concerns such as the pressures on civil and human rights and on institutions, and speeches and actions that seek to normalise bias and discrimination. The stock market has thrived, but money is dearer and poverty is a daily reality for a very large number of people. Even with all its challenges, the nation is young and hopeful in a world growing old.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The world is riven by two terrible wars, and its inability to stop them shows that the global community and its institutions have lost the moral and political power and authority to tame even rogue nations. A new President will assume charge of the world’s top power, triggering fears and apprehensions about the future. The other superpower, weakened by a slowing economy, is unpredictable and unreliable. Climate change is real and closing in on the world which still has not agreed on how to cope with it. The sky is bright and cloudy on the New Year eve and here is wishing that it will be more bright than cloudy in the year that has just dawned.</p>
