MARITIME DIPLOMACY: Navy chiefs of 16 countries attended the International Fleet Review

Mumbai: The first-ever International Fleet Review in February was graduation parade for the Indian Navy. Destroyers, frigates, minesweepers, corvettes and submarines from 19 navies packed the sea off Mumbai; 21 guns boomed in honour of the President in the same Naval Docks where once the British monarch's warships held sway.

A few months on and with the winds of change powering it, the navy had set up the Andaman and Nicobar Command and was looking to extend its area of influence to the Straits of Malacca. Almost 52 per cent of world trade traverses this narrow waterway, and Japan's energy security depends on it. More reason India, the US and Japan should be friends.

Cock Up

Delhi: First they thought it was a hijack, then a mock hijack before realising it was only a joke on high. On October 3, there was a call at Alliance Air's Delhi airport office that its Flight CD 7444 had been hijacked. Everyone from Home Minister L.K. Advani downwards went into a tizzy, before realising the mischief garbled words can cause.

On a High

BIG BOY: The GSLV lifts off

Shriharikota: For our space scientists it was a year that began none too well. On March 27, the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle's flight was aborted one split second before take off. On April 18, they tried again, this time successfully-an achievement that propelled India into the stratospheric club of five powers that have the capability to put communication satellites into orbit.

But much as they might like to, Indian scientists still can't see desi James Bonds mixing business and pleasure, though they did string up a 1.1 tonne satellite 800 km up in space to keep an eye on our lives and times. The coyly named Technology Experiment Satellite which rode into orbit astride the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in October can take pictures with a one-metre resolution, so things like white Ambassador cars can be caught on candid camera. What the camera won't be able to resolve is whether the car contains militants or honest god-fearing MPs from Bihar. Perhaps that is why ISRO head K. Kasturirangan told reporters the country's first such satellite is for "civilian use consistent with our security concerns". Whatever that means.

BEASTLY: No respect for the dead BSF men

Pyrdiwah: India's friendly neighbour Bangladesh did worse than most enemies: it sent back brutalised bodies of 16 BSF men. As images of a slain jawan strung on a pole like an animal carcass flashed across TV screens and national indignation rose, the NDA Government-whose members in the Northeast warn of infiltration from Bangladesh-responded with a now characteristic Gandhian restraint. The Bangladesh Rifles had taken over a disputed village in Meghalaya called Pyrdiwah by the Indians and Padua by the Bangladeshis. India blamed the provocation on Hasina Wajed's foes and refused to weaken her domestically. They needn't have bothered. Hasina lost the election later in the year to India-baiter Khaleda Zia. Delhi sent PMO honcho Brajesh Mishra to tell her it can also do business with her.

Delhi: India may not have to divest its dreams of disinvestment. 2001 saw the process of privatisation going beyond the false starts of earlier years. Most heartening was the fact that the public sector companies put on the block-balco, CMC, Hindustan Teleprinter and six hotels of ITDC-were all for privatisation, not piecemeal disinvestments. There are reasons to hope privatisation will pick up speed.

The Centre's refusal to buckle under the Opposition's pressure to cancel the BALCO sale pleased privatisation's proponents. The Supreme Court's ruling upholding the BALCO deal should end the procrastinating debates on the valuation of PSUs. That bodes well for Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie who has set a heavy agenda for 2001-2. If Shourie lives up to his resolve VSNL, IPCL and Hindustan Zinc, among others, won't be government owned by April 2002.

HOLLOW REMAINS: Here they stood

Felling the Buddha

Bamiyan: The end of peace began symbolically, and well before the war. From the 2nd century a.d., the Bamiyan Buddhas had watched serenely over residents of the valley and visitors who wended their way on the Silk Route. But when Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, issued an edict to destroy the "shrine of infidels" on February 26, 8,000 Taliban fighters fell to blasting the statues with tanks and explosives. Within two weeks, the Buddhas, one 53 m and the other 37 m tall, had been reduced to rubble. Though the Taliban are not the first iconoclasts to attack these statues-their hands and faces were obliterated by invading armies in the past-this time the loss is permanent. The incident brought Afghanistan into international focus in a portentous manner.