Having scraped through the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, India raised its hopes last winter as it began vaccinations by mid-January. But no one was prepared for what was in store.
April to May 2021. It was clearly one of India’s worst summers of death and despair. Delta, a highly infectious strain of the novel coronavirus first detected in India, spread like wildfire. Lack of testing kits, hospital beds and life-saving oxygen led to large-scale deaths.
It was an unmitigated disaster. The fortnight from April 25 to May 10 alone witnessed close to 54,000 deaths while May recorded over one lakh fatalities. The official toll was hotly contested by many citing an undercount.
Here’s looking back at the highs and lows of the year gone by:
Delta scourge and Omicron fear
Delta tested India’s resolve. Doctors differed over the use of plasma therapy, ‘miracle’ drugs such as remdesivir, flavipiravir and steroids. Pictures of full-to-the-capacity crematoriums and burial grounds, bodies floating in the Ganga were splashed on television screens and newspapers.
Worst hit was the National Capital Region. Big private hospitals sent SOS seeking steady supply of oxygen as Delhi gasped for breath. People watched in horror. Courts intervened to rap underprepared governments.
While there is much to cheer for as India achieved the milestone of administering over 140 crore doses, it is now certain to fall short of its initial target of “fully vaccinating” the entire adult population of 94 crore.
India has much to thank Adar Poonawalla for, whose Serum Institute is solely responsible for 90 per cent of Covid-19 vaccines used in the country.
In a replay of haphazard lockdown measures by states, notably night curfews, and vaccine mandates, India is still debating on boosters and whether it should vaccinate children. Even as the Omicron variant is spreading across the country, efficacy of current vaccines is being questioned.
Israel has rolled out a fourth dose while the US and Europe have raced ahead with boosters.
Centre bows before protesting farmers
Despite the Delta fear, farmers protesting against the three new farm laws stood their ground and stayed put at Delhi borders. After many failed rounds of negotiations and violent clashes, the Centre finally decided to withdraw the three contentious laws. Protesting farmers from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh ended their year-long strike after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his decision to scrap the farm laws.
Mamata Didi has the last laugh in Bengal
As Delta wreaked havoc across the country, the BJP’s biggest star campaigner Prime Minister Modi had to suspend political campaigning in West Bengal. In what was billed as the ‘mother of all assembly elections’, incumbent chief minister Mamata Banerjee fought a fierce political battle. The streetfighter leader won a third straight term with an even bigger mandate, dashing the saffron party’s hopes of conquering the eastern frontier.
Golden Moment at Tokyo Olympics
2021 may just go down in history as the best year for Indian sports. Shuttler PV Sindhu became the only Indian woman to win two individual Olympic medals. The men’s hockey team collected the bronze after 41 years taking the country back to the sport’s golden years. Though it was a near-miss for the women’s hockey team, its valiant fight won many hearts back home.
But the year clearly belonged to Neeraj Chopra. The unassuming and modest 23-year-old from Panipat scripted history by winning the first track and field gold medal by any Indian in 100 years. An entire nation, still reeling from the devastating second wave, rejoiced Chopra’s golden moment on an unforgettable August 7, 2021.
Virat Kohli captaincy row
It was also a year of quitting. Cricketer Virat Kohli quit as T20 captain to focus on his batting. Later, he was controversially stripped of his one-day international captaincy. The year started on a great note with a sensational and historic test series victory in Australia, but India crashed out of the T20 World Cup. This brought down the curtains on the careers of Ravi Shastri as coach and Kohli as the white ball captain. The team is yet to win an ICC tournament since 2013, earning the reputation as the “new chokers”. Now it’s over to new coach Rahul Dravid and Rohit Sharma to put India back on the podium.
Tributes and condolences
India had to bid farewell to two legends: actor Dilip Kumar and ‘Flying Sikh’ Milkha Singh. In a shocking incident towards the end of the year, India’s first chief of defence staff Gen Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika were killed along with 12 others in a tragic chopper crash.
Omicron threat looms large
The Delta tragedy fresh in mind, India moves into 2022 with trepidation even as the Omicron threat looms large. India’s total infections caused by the new variant have climbed to 415 with Maharashtra recording the highest such infections. Experts have predicted that the third wave fuelled by Omicron is likely to hit India early in the new year.
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