It's taken less than a year to gauge the reaction to one of those trends, but it's been a harrowing 365 days. The first year of the new millennium brought with it political and economic turmoil of a magnitude not seen in the 25 years that preceded it. But it is traditional for these annual last-page missives to look, not at the past, but at the future.

Thus, you won't find too many words devoted to 9-11, the global economic slowdown, the curious case of the Indian economy, and the looming war clouds on the horizon as we end this year. What can we look forward to in 2002? It is now evident that the American economy won't turn around till the third quarter of 2002; it'll probably take a little longer for the global economy to bounce back. That's the good news.

The bad news is that, even a strong revival in the US economy won't mean much for India, despite that country being our largest trading partner. Much of what ails the Indian economy lies within, and given the compulsions of coalition politics, we are unlikely to see radical second-generation reforms in 2002. Yes, the budget will probably be another masterful exercise, but as events of 2001 have shown, there's a huge difference between what the finance minister says and what he does.

Worse, some economists-there's no shortage of Cassandras-are already positing that events of 2002 will make 2001 look like a Christmas party. Indeed, if the Indian economy doesn't come out of the nosedive it is in (fine, 'insular' nosedive, if you insist Mr Sinha), then 2002 could see more pink slips, more bleeding P&L accounts, and, in general, more misery. That should make us all look at the year that has just passed a little more positively.

That quote from my letter to the reader in January 2001 wasn't just put at the beginning of this piece as a we-told-you-so fragment of mistletoe. Its presence there, on top of the page, was supposed to inspire the author into making a similar farsighted (even if I say so myself) observation for the year. Here goes:

For much of 2001, China haunted India. Industry feared it would wipe out Indian businesses in several areas: toys, chemicals, consumer durables, electrical equipment, even software. ''Do you know that everyone in Beijing will speak fluent English by 2008?'' asked a senior executive of a software firm exploring opportunities in China. That was in mid-2001, at the peak of the China-paranoia. By the end of the year, China had entered the World Trade Organisation; Indian industry had discovered several outsourcing opportunities in that country; and the dread of the C-word was easing a bit. Still, it was imprinted in our collective unconsciousness that China was the country to beat.

All, however, isn't well with our neighbour to the north. An autocratic state has managed to leverage years of command-and-control conditioning into some significant business gains. But the strain is starting to show. If there is a great divide between urban and rural India, and between the rich and the poor, then the corresponding rift in China is nothing short of a chasm. That simmering discontent finds a harmless outlet in India, thanks to our politics of democracy (however flawed it may be). In China, starved of such an outlet, it surfaces every now and then-like the bomb attack on a McDonald's outlet. If the divide threatens to slow down India, then, it menaces to cripple China. Don't fear China then, pity it. Happy New Year.

Sanjoy Narayan