Sunanda K Datta Ray | Hope in the new dawn after ravages of 2020?

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Thanks to native acumen, political patronage and conditions that Karl Marx would at once have recognised as uncannily similar to nineteenth century England in the throes of the Industrial Revolution — the inspiration for his own magnum opus — India’s rich became richer amidst the pain and penury, death and disease that marked 2020 as a year of suffering. Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani and Ramdev, whose “Baba” or “Swami” prefix is a courtesy title like the Uttar Pradesh chief minister’s “Yogi”, saw their fortunes soar astronomically. In jubilantly noting that the United Kingdom had leapfrogged India to become the world’s fifth-largest economy, Britain’s Centre for Economic and Business Research confirmed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India “had been losing momentum even ahead of the shock” of Covid-19 and was “knocked off course” during the pandemic. The further news that an enfeebled India is not expected to regain momentum or be able to overtake the UK again until 2024 must have gladdened Britain’s boisterous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, already crowing triumphantly at having at last concluded a 1,246-page deal with the European Union, as he prepared to pack his bags to take the salute at the Republic Day parade in New Delhi.