Battered Suitcase Of Gold

There must be something to the feel-good factor that makes people want to perpetuate the good times. Ask Prakash Mansaram Suryavanshi, 45-year-old branch postmaster from Amoda village in Jalgaon in Maharashtra.

He coaxed Indians who normally shy away from nasty subjects like premature death into parting with Rs 7.17 crore in premium for rural postal life insurance policies. The villagers had the money, he had the product. The Rs 1.79 lakh incentive made it a golden year indeed.

Small Can Be Very Big

He thought small. It led Shankar Ghose, 28, to one of India's biggest scientific discoveries in 2003. Ghose, a graduate student with Ajay Sood at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, succeeded in generating electricity by simply running water over tiny tubes called carbon nanotubes. It could one day lead to a new type of power plant. It has potential for application in batteryless biomedical devices-like heart pacemakers powered by the flow of blood.

Alankar Malviyasaw no stop signs on the information superhighway and hit the accelerator. A middle-level government employee, he became the first civil servant from Madhya Pradesh to be accepted for a master's course in development management in three universities in England. What is more, proving that India is irretrievably e-linked, Malviya,31, took his scholarship test and submitted his applications on the Internet. "Panchayati Raj and decentralisation have opened the windows for me," he says. Even in a bimaru state, the Net is cast wide.

Wows And Vows Across The Border

When the celebrated Sada-e-Sarhad, the bus between Delhi and Lahore, resumed its run in October, Tahira Hazurof Faisalabad could finally travel to India for her nikah with Maqbool Ahmad of Gurdaspur. Strained relations between India and Pakistan had denied them the joy of matrimony for two years. "Love knows no boundaries," says Ahmad. "For us 2003 was a year that brought two hearts together."

Environment Friendly

2003 made perfect eco-sense to Pachiappan. When the Tamil Nadu Government made rain-water harvesting compulsory for all Chennai buildings, the quick-thinking mason, who had not had stable work for two years, got down to work and earned enough to pay back part of a home loan.

Effervescence And Conflict

Sunita Narain began the Great Gulp War that has now gone to the Joint Parliamentary Committee. The director of Delhi's Centre for Science and Environment said lab results showed 12 brands of fizzy drinks had high levels of pesticide. She angered both the MNCs and the Government, but does the feisty lady care?

Flavour Of The Year

From a crackpot to a hero. That sums up 2003 for John Mathew. When he took to growing a climbing orchid eight years ago, the villagers thought he was crazy to rid his land of rubber and pepper. But the plant was vanilla and this year the price of its green beans touched a record Rs 3,560 per kg. Mathew, 32, earned Rs 14.3 lakh from a plot of land that had never yielded so much. Rubber did not bring in much beyond Rs 130 a kg. A cyclone had destroyed the vanilla crop in Madagascar, the world's biggest producer, and sent the global prices of the flavouring agent sky-high.

Law In His Hand

In a year when the judiciary took upon itself the task of rectifying several anomalies, it was fitting perhaps that senior advocate K.T.S. Tulsi should have won his fight against the builders lobby and recalcitrant government departments. Counsel for the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy, he got the Delhi High Court to announce a compensation of Rs 20 crore for those who died in the inferno five years ago. Unflagging in his zeal, he advised the relatives of the victims to form a body to take on the powerful opponents. "We will keep on fighting," he says.