2022 wrap-up: a year between breaths

2022 is about to pass in a few hours. Whether it was good, bad, or ugly is a question for everyone to ponder. A singular truth, however, emerges. You are not the person you were at the beginning of this year, just like you will not be the person you are at the end of the next. Keeping hopes high for 2023, here is ETV Bharat wrapping up 2022 for you.

Hyderabad: It is rightly said that life is lived in between two pauses – the pause after we exhale and before we inhale but 2022 is a year when people perhaps breathed freely after a pause of more than two years. Coming out of the Covid pandemic, this is the first year when we breathed without a filter on our nose and poison in the air.

The two years -- 2020 and 2021 -- went by with many of us seeing our loved ones snatched away by an invisible force. As 2022 began, words such as 'beginning of the end' provided solace. It could have been a year of recovery and reconciliation had sanity prevailed. While Covid-19 let loose its grip, the world came together to tear itself apart with war, as if the pandemic hadn't already taken enough human lives.

On 24 February 2022, Russian troops launched a major military escalation in Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin used terms like "demilitarisation" and "denazification" to justify his actions, ironically around the same time the world was turning a leaf on the biggest health crisis of the century.

Russia planned to take over Ukraine after capturing its key positions and infrastructure while eliminating the Ukrainian leadership. Some called it Putin's 10-day Ukraine annexation plan. However, to Putin's utter surprise, Ukraine had other plans. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. The escalation hardly subsided. Ukraine, against all odds, made life difficult for the advancing Russian forces. The resistance, however, came with its cost.

The invasion resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides and caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II, with an estimated 8 million people being displaced within the country by late May as well as 7.8 million Ukrainians fleeing the country as of 8 November 2022.

The Russo-Ukrainian war was the last thing a world limping out of Covid-19 needed. Already off-balance, the global economy received a major energy shock triggered by Russia's continued aggression. Fragmentation of trade, inflationary pressures, and dwindling purchasing power followed as the European Union and the US introduced significant sanctions against the Bear.

The energy shock triggered by Russia's war against Ukraine saw the UK economy, the most stable in the last 500 years, veering dangerously toward free fall. It was seen as a dominating factor behind Britain’s current cost-of-living crisis of mounting household bills.

Overall, 2022 was a tough year for the UK not just because of the looming economic crisis. On September 8, the longest reigning British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, died of old age in Scotland. Her eldest son, King Charles III became the new monarch of England. The country also saw three prime ministers in a matter of few months with Indian-origin Rishi Sunak taking over after Liz Truss resigned in October.

Meanwhile, as Russia's hotheadedness made it chase its own tail, the United States did its bit to upset the Dragon. US Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived with a delegation in Taiwan in August making Xi Jinping's China see red.

Pelosi flew into Taiwan on a US Air Force jet and became the highest-ranking American official in 25 years to visit the self-ruled island. The in-your-face move saw China announcing military maneuvers in retaliation as it claims Taiwan as part of its territory, and views visits by foreign government officials as them recognising the island's sovereignty. Pelosi portrayed her high-profile trip as part of a US obligation to stand with democracies against autocratic countries, and with democratic Taiwan against China.

While the two superpowers poked one another, things weren't by any means normal in the Indian subcontinent in 2022. Sri Lanka faced the worst economic crisis since its independence in 1948. The country witnessed unprecedented levels of inflation, near-hollow foreign exchange reserves, and a massive shortage of essential supplies including medicine and fuel.

The United Nations report said that the Sri Lankan crisis resulted from officials' impunity for human rights abuses and economic crimes. For a layman, however, it was a result of tax cuts, money creation, a nationwide policy to shift to organic or biological farming, the 2019 Easter bombings, and above all the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notwithstanding the Sri Lanka crisis, the border tensions worsened between India and China. After the 2020 face-off in Galwan, the two countries were never able to get back to talking terms in the real sense. Tension further escalated after the Chinese Army allegedly attempted to change the LAC (Line of Actual Control) and tried to enter Indian territory at Yangtse in the Tawang sector in Arunachal Pradesh on December 13.

The major face-off where the PLA troops clashed with three units of the Indian Army belonging to different infantry regiments happened nearly a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on November 15 this year.

As India dealt with provocative neighbours, the 2022 silver lining for the country was overtaking the United Kingdom as the 5th largest economy in the world. The country’s economy, which underwent a large structural shift, is expected to pip Germany in 2027 and Japan by 2029 at the current rate of growth, as per a State Bank of India (SBI) research report.

Real GDP in the first quarter of 2022–23 is currently about 4% higher than its corresponding 2019-20, indicating a strong start for India's recovery from the pandemic. Rising employment and substantially increasing private consumption, supported by rising consumer sentiment, will support GDP growth in the coming months.

If the economic parameter was the only yardstick to evaluate whether 2022 was good, bad or ugly, we Indians have enough reasons to rejoice as well as ponder. The nation showed courage and broad-heartedness to elect a tribal woman as the President of the country.

Droupadi Murmu became the first person from a tribal community and the second woman after Pratibha Patil to hold the highest constitutional position in India. The moment to reflect on, however, was how the country failed to provide the tribals and the other backward communities with basic social security and protection from medieval injustice.

There were several reports from across the nation where women were not only butchered in the name of protecting family prestige but were chopped up inhumanly to remove the traces of the crime. Crimes in India were never so gory before.

Coming to the beginning, it is always difficult to say whether the year 2022 was an end to our deadly battle with the unseen or it was a new beginning- looking forward to a world where we can breathe freely or it was just a pause before the virus can begin another cycle of struggle. One thing is certain - "in life, as in music, the pauses make all the difference".

Pauses refresh and renew, hence they actually contribute to our productivity. But even more important, they bring balance and an enjoyable rhythm to life. We cannot live at all without the long pause of sleep or even the tiny pause between breaths. Pauses give life. So we all lived in a pause – a long pause of 365 days and now our wisdom lies in figuring out how to make these endings hold up the beginnings.