2010 has had its own share of disasters. Despite the fact that we have advanced so much in preventing and predicting disasters, it is something we haven’t been able to stop happening. From political to technical to even natural disasters, there was a lot which brought a lot of misery to people.
There were also certain disasters which benefited a lot of people, like Reliance’s failed acquisition of LyondellBasell much to the delight of its competitors :)
Contents
Top 10 disasters of year 2010
CWG and its sham
From the entire organization, infrastructure to Lalit Bhanot’s comment “Our hygiene standards are different from the Western ones”, it was a complete disaster for the country. The CWG probably caused more damage to country’s name
The only saving grace was the fantastic performance of our athletes who gave all of us a great reason to smile and be proud of our Indian-ness.
Intense heat wave
The heat wave during the summers this year across the country killed more than 250 people and bringing misery to thousands others. It went on record to become the hottest summer in more than 50 years. Global warming anyone?
RIL’s failed acquisition bid
RIL’s failed bid to acquire LyondellBasell despite upping its bid price to US $ 14.5 billion was one of the biggest M & A disasters of the year
Leh floods
Leh which gets very minimal rainfall throughout the year and as is called a high altitude cold desert for the reason got more than its share of rainfall for a year on a single day – 6th August. More than 200 people were killed due to this
iPhone4 Antenna problems
The Apple iPhone’s antenna was a problem across the world and India was no different. With problems in signals and dropped calls, more and more people started voicing their opinion against Apple.
Nano disaster
From being labelled as the world’s cheapest car priced at Rs 1 lac to having safety issues causing fires, manufacturing defects, its shape / design and also poor financial issues – Nano’s journey had come a full circle and it ended up selling lesser units than Mercedes in November
IX – 812 Crash
Air India express flight IX – 812 coming in from Dubai crashed while landing at the Mangalore Airport on 22nd May 2010. It was one of the worst air disasters in the country since a long period of time. In the weeks after that there were more than 10-15 near misses of air crashes / disasters
Cyclone time
From Giri to Laila to Jal the only thing interesting about these cyclones was their names. Otherwise it was all eerily similar – great loss of lives and property. One step closer to 2012, is it?
Scam year
From CWG to 2G to UP Basmati Rice, it was the year of scams in the country with each and everyone wanting a share of the pie. It seemed as though no day would pass of without us hearing of at least some scam or the other. What a shame!
CAT
Last but not the least. The famous CAT test for MBA aspirants which went online last year but had results coming up this year turned out to be such a technical disaster with everyone wondering as to who was running Prometric. From bugs attacking the server to computers losing data, it ended up being such a SHAM!
Did I miss out any? Let us know…
In a lighter vein, I would like to say that the injury to Zaheer Khan and his subsequent absence in the first test casued India losing the test by an innings to S.Africa.
I dont know how many readers agree with this. Just my two paisa :)
Hahaha! That could be a disaster as he has come back amazingly to lead India to a famous win in the 2nd test :P
There is another one which you have surely missed…that is the GSLV launch failure… this one is 2nd on the trot failure and is a big disaster as far as India image worldwide goes…
Yeah, GSLV launch failure due to some technical problem and it was exploded in mid sky.
Thanks for updating Arun :)
Out of all the 10 disasters Leh floods was most embarrassing in the sense of human instances :-(