As 2018 comes to a close, The Wire‘s staff shares its favourite articles and videos from the year. Read Part One here and Part Three here.1. Nehmat Kaur, Editor of LiveWireWhat Does a Guy Have to Do to Find a Flat? Be MarriedWe started LiveWire hoping we’d get to publish pieces that were personal and widely resonant at the same time. This essay, which deals with the trials of being young, unmarried and independent in India, did just that. Jithin Emmanuel Jacob gave voice to a shockingly common experience that highlights some of the most pervasive social biases that shape our lives. And he did it with some humour. 2. Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding EditorA Chronicle of the Crime Fiction That is Adityanath’s Encounter RajFake encounters have been a part of unstated official policy in many states for a long time, but Yogi Adityanath has now openly given sanction to his policemen in Uttar Pradesh. Neha Dixit’s piece highlights the dangers of this policy through careful reporting of several actual incidents. 3. Anoo Bhuyan, Health reporterIn Chhattisgarh, Public Funds for Health Insurance Are Being Diverted to the Private SectorThe government’s announcement of the “world’s largest healthcare scheme” this February was so well spun and so glitzy in its promotion that for weeks, the public couldn’t grasp that it was nothing but a big old health insurance scheme.This piece on how health insurance has worked out in Chhattisgarh came at the right time to respond to the government’s vociferous marketing. The article by Sulakshna Nandi, Deepika Joshi and Sangeeta Sahu is an insightful one, as the authors are academics and activists – clued in to the scene on the ground, and able to couple that with rigorous analysis. 4. Raghu Karnad, Chief of BureauThe Story of Dust, Through Space and TimeDust is inescapable in Delhi – in the air, also in conversation. But it’s good to step back from our crises, on occasion, and take in a larger perspective. And there’s no perspective larger than the one our science editor, Vasudevan Mukunth, brings to dust in this essay – carrying us further and further out into a cosmos where dust is still inescapable, but increasingly mysterious, and finally majestic. 5. Monobina Gupta, Managing EditorBengal: Genealogies of Violence (a series)Delving into history, this nine-part series by a range of scholars tries to understand the legacy of political violence in Bengal. The essays shine a light on Bengal’s turbulent past, informing the present everyday violence – a unique feature of Bengal’s social and political life. 6. Avi Krish Bedi, News producerTamil Nadu Resists New Law Despite Increase in Caste-Related MurdersWith unembellished and raw reporting on caste-related atrocities in Tamil Nadu, this article’s visual evocations are heart-rending. What also stood out was Kavitha Muralidharan’s breadth of engagement with different perspectives. 7. Karnika Kohli, Social Media EditorWhy I Believe Tanushree Dutta and Dr Christine Blasey FordThis essay by Nehmat Kaur is very close to my heart because it perfectly captures what the #MeToo movement was like for women – for those who shared their stories, for those who had to relive their trauma listening to others’ experiences, and also for those who couldn’t find the strength to name and shame their predators but still stood by their sisters and said #IBelieveHer.Here’s to strong women – May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them. 8. Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar, Deputy EditorHow Did the EC Link 300 Million Voter IDs to Aadhaar In Just a Few Months?Anuj Srivas’s article stood out for me this year, revealing what has always been known but not described so lucidly – that successive governments have been keen on using Aadhaar not only for the delivery of services, but also for excluding people from them, and increasing surveillance.In this case, the Election Commission resorted to linking Aadhaar data with voter IDs without legal mandate. It tried to use it to make electoral rolls “100% error free”. This “purification” initiative was stopped by the Supreme Court. By then the EC had already collected the Aadhaar numbers of over 300 million voters..img-circle {border-radius: 50%;}
