2022: What Awaits In Politics, Business, Technology, Sports And Movies

The world enters 2022 with the pandemic dictating across all the markets heavily, with the Delta variant to Omicron wreaking havoc on the health of the people and the world economy. New year's celebrations went for a toss as the pandemic rages throughout the world. But with booster doses and lessons from the previous waves of Covid-19, the world expects to come out of the pandemic and go continue with their pre-pandemic normal lives this year. From politics and sports to tech and business, let's have a look at how India and the world are going to see these fields changing in 2022.

Politics 

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2022 will witness some of the biggest elections in the Indian democracy. State elections of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa are most likely to be held in the spring season (February/March) and the ones of Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and  Jammu and Kashmir in Winters, around November.

The elections are to be conducted amid high cases of Covid-19 in the country, with a projection of the third wave. Will the politicians learn a lesson from the previous Covid-19 waves or continue with their business as usual in 2022 will be answered as the elections come closer.  

With BJP going full force with announcing new projects, inaugurating the ongoing ones and the opposition standing with the sword of the anger of riled up protestors from multiple protests, the election battle on the states' turfs will be a fight, the entire nation will be interested in witnessing. 

Parties confined to regional politics a few years ago are making their marks outside their territories. The Aam Aadmi Party is introducing candidates in all of the states baking on its landslide victory in the Delhi Elections of 2020 and the Trinamool Congress on its West Bengal one. Existing members from the Indian National Congress are joining TMC in day after day and the on-ground results of these changes will interest the nation with a good taste of the multi-party democracy that India is.

Presidential and Vice Presidential elections are also set to occur in 2022.  

Sports 

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The world entered into 2021 with full preparations for sports events to be conducted with bio bubbles, resilient live streaming, and a massive shift to Over The Top (OTT) platforms. The year 2022 awaits numerous sports tournaments, the most awaited ones of them being - 

1. Commonwealth Games to be held in  Birmingham, UK from 28th July to 8th August. 

2. Asian Games to be held in China from 10th to 15th September in China.

3. ICC Men's T20 World Cup to be held in Australia in the months of October and November 2022.

4. FIFA World Cup, the men's tournament will be held in Qatar from November 21 to December 18, 2022. 

Although major sporting tournaments saw wide audiences attending the venues and enjoying in volumes, some unlucky ones like the Olympics had to be heavily isolated from the public in the light of rising Covid-19 cases. As the Omicron variant is spreading fast in Western Europe, the US and even India, the upcoming 2-3 months will be hard to predict in terms of determining the status of hosting in-person sports audiences.

Business

Cryptocurrency is the hype for 2022. The Indian parliament has deferred the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 and it was not voted upon in the last session of this year. According to industry tracker Trackxm, India attracted $638 million in cryptocurrency investments in 2021. While crypto investors and exchanges look the year 2021 as a ray of hope due to the government's ambiguous stance on the digital currency and the emerging crypto opportunities, 2022 will see a deeper engagement of Indians in the cryptocurrency market. 

While the economy was still in the aftershock of the initial lockdowns of the pandemic, the Stock market was on a boom. Sensex touched its highest at 62 thousand this year in October. Will the rise continue or its time for some course correction in 2022 is something investors will decide. 

Indian startup ecosystem saw 44 more unicorns (companies with valuation of over a billion USD) and 9 IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). With more and more Fintech and IT startups gaining prominence, investments are bound to flow into the Indian markets in 2022. What is also expected from 2022 is for LIC to release its IPO.

Tech 

2022 is going to a year for Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Artificial intelligence entering seamlessly into our lives.

The amalgamation of Web 3.0 and Facebook's Metaverse have opened up new corridors for the possibility of physical reality and virtual reality (VR) merging together. Microsoft is also working on 'Mesh', a platform which could incorporate virtual experiences directly into Microsoft Teams. Companies are looking forward to extend their the concept to VR to sectors like education, healthcare and of course, gaming. 

Since the work from home and pandemic lockdowns environment confined people to their homes, gaming industry grew more than ever. So much so that the Indian gaming industry is expected to become a $2 Billion industry by 2023. 

As companies are dealing with employees accustomed to work from home, cloud computing and office management technologies will continue to thrive. With it, the cybersecurity market also deems to go up. Smith Gonsalves, who runs CyberSmithSECURE, a cybersecurity company tells us, "The cybersecurity market in India has a lot of potential in the upcoming year. With the Data Protection Bill round the corner, companies are looking forward to make their cybersecurity postures more robust. To comply with latest cybersecurity standards, they will continue to engage with the cybersecurity market which will lead to its massive growth this year." 

As the world enters into yet another year with the piled up pandemic, 2022 will also see some long-awaited superhero fare like The Batman, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One); action and adventure with Uncharted and The Lost City; rousing family films like Sonic the Hedgehog 2. 

OTT platforms are going to overpower cinemas just like they have been doing for the past two years amid pandemic restrictions.