25 Questions For 2005

2. Will Laloo Yadav’s hold over Bihar be underlined in the assembly elections in February? Or will ‘anti-incumbency’ trip off every talking head’s tongue?

3.Will justice finally be done for the victims and families of the Kanishka air crash? The 1985 bombing of the Air-India flight from Toronto to India killed 329. And after a 19-year, $100-million trial, Ripudaman Singh Malik, 57, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 55, will hear the verdict of a Vancouver court on March 16.

4. After securing certificates from every country in the solar system, will India finally get a seat on the UN Security Council with or without the veto? Or will Japan and Indonesia, who have also been clamouring for a place, play spoilsport?

5. With 200 political groups fighting for places in the 275-seat national assembly, will Iraq’s January 30 polls usher in a democratic government? Or, will the country slide further into civil war?

6. Iraq taken care of, will George W. Bush train his sights on Iran?

7. Will the cracks begin to show in the European Union? Eight EU states vote in a referendum on the proposed Constitution, and even a single ‘No’ could derail the process.

8. Will Benazir Bhutto return to Pakistan to take part in elections now that husband Asif Zardari is out?

9. Will Tony Blair do a Dubya? Or will the Iraq War claim the British prime minister in spite of that country’s "Golden Age"?

10. Will Kofi Annan preside over the 60th session of the United Nations? Or will the secretary-general, battling charges of his son’s involvement in the oil-for-food scam, meet his comeuppance a year before he is to retire?

11. Who will run for the next UN chief? Will Singapore’s ex-ambassador to the UN, Kishore Mahbubani, throw his hat into the ring?

12. Will the Reliance saga ‘Brothers Ambani’ play to full houses once again in the Year of the Rooster?

13. Will the cost of life-saving drugs shoot through the roof when India adopts the new patents regime as part of the wto deal?

14. Will Sensex hit 7000 by budget day? Will India’s forex reserves touch $150 billion? Will fii inflow for the calendar year top the $10-billion mark?

15. Will vat result in a more efficient tax collection system? Or will the government roll back the launch date fearing a backlash from traders?

16. Will there be another IPO boom with Jet Airways, ONGC, even maybe Tata Sons, going public?

17. Will you be able to buy a dollar for Rs 40?

18. Will BCCI announce a full-fledged cricket tour of India by Pakistan, the first by that country since 1999?

19. Will New York City win the race to host the 2012 Olympics? Or will current favourite Paris get the IOC nod?

20. Will Australia’s domination of world cricket finally come to an end? A Rest of the World team will take on the rampaging Aussies in the ICC Super Series: three one-dayers (October 5, 7 and 9) and a six-day Test starting October 13.

21. Will Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince make J.K. Rowling even richer? Of course, the fourth Potter film is due in November.

22. What will Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code II unearth, now that we know the Priory of Sion secret?

23. Will Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg pull it off with their take on War of the Worlds?

24. Will Shwaas—Sandeep Sawant’s story of an old man who has to take his grandson to the city to save him from retinal cancer—do what Ashutosh Gowariker’s band of cricketers couldn’t with Lagaan at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on February 27? Win an Oscar?

25. Will charges of plagiarism cloud the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity?