December 30, 2002.

Hope and trepidation in New Delhi.

No predictions for 2003.

Only hope.

The first 35 days of the winter session of Parliament saw the clearance of 27 bills that had been gathering dust.

The new Securitisation bill has empowered banks to go after defaulters, and go after them they have.

And trepidation.

Is the disinvestment of oil majors BPCL and HPCL off or on?

Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie thinks it is on.

Petroleum Minister Ram Naik thinks it is off. So do a hundred others, each opposing the disinvestment process for uniquely selfish reasons.

Is the Securitisation bill enough to pull the Indian financial sector from the NPA (Non Performing Assets) purgatory it seems headed for?

Hope because there seems to be a general consensus on the softer side of second-generation reforms-on the need to take the process mass, to focus its benefits on the not-so-rich and the poor.

And trepidation because the far left doesn't like business, the far right doesn't like anything foreign (companies, investments, or ideas), and some part of the middle is obsessed with the Nehruvian brand of socialism that is primarily responsible for many of the country's economic woes.

I mentally flip through the pages of this issue.

I see winners.

A behemoth that works to global scale across sectors-petrochem, oil, now telecom-which created the equity cult.

A start-up that is now one of India's (and the world's) most respected it-services company which shared its wealth with employees, creating tens of self-made millionaires.

Global-winners-to-be in pharma, biotech, it and it-enabled services. That was only to be expected.

And global-winners-to-be in surprise sectors such as paints, oil, non-ferrous metals, banking, motorcycles and cement.

A multi-hued canvas of winners that proves that it is possible for Indian companies and, by extension, India, to win, irrespective of size and sector.

I see all these.

I see hope.

Then I look at the day's papers.

I see financial institutions begging the government for handouts they need to survive.

Past-their-prime industrialists lobbying the government for protection-from competition, from banks and financial institutions that loaned them money for projects that never took off, from reality.

Luddite-legislators opposing the reforms process simply because they don't understand them.

Mercenary-legislators doing the same because their corporate masters have instructed them to.

The opposition parties doing it because that is what the opposition is supposed to do.

I see the government losing its reformist zeal in a year of elections.

I see politics, not economics, guiding the economic future of the nation.

And I am filled with trepidation.

But the beginning of a new year is not the place for my misgivings, or our collective misgivings since we all know what is wrong.

A new year is a time to celebrate winning.

It is a time to hope that a panoramic sweep of Indian winners, individual and corporate, will stir all the rest of us into inspired activity.

Cynics that we are, we didn't expect to find too many winners.

We did, and you hold the result in your hands.

One final thought: we know it is possible, and we also know what needs to be done but if, for some reason, we decide to wait till the next real election-there it is again, that sinking feeling-the country may have lost its chance of becoming an economic superpower for ever. On such seemingly simple decisions are empires won or lost.

Here's hoping you have a better 2003.

SANJOY NARAYAN