2017: A recap of the year that was

We should have some insight on news since over 2 billion pages of news have been consumed just on Indianexpress.com this year and millions more of our stories on partner sites and platforms. But what does India really read? It’s easy to say it will all be Bollywood and Cricket, and that’s true to an extent. But they do other things too, especially when it is news that will impact them in someway or the other. (READ HERE FOR FULL STORY )

WATCH VIDEO: Top Smartphones 2017 | Phones That Delivered Value For Consumers

Rahul Gandhi at Somnath Temple (INC)

Rahul Gandhi’s coming of age in 2017 sparks hopes of a Congress revival

The year 2017 may well be called a watershed moment in Rahul Gandhi’s patchy political career. It is not just because he was finally elevated to the top-most post of the 132-year-old party, but because he came to be seen as a leader who has the capacity to appeal to the masses and the ability to capture the imagination of people, shedding the tag of an elitist and “cameo activist”. (READ HERE)

Read on the important cases that reached its end and crucial judgments of 2017 that changed the course of law.

Right to privacy, instant triple talaq, age of consent: SC’s crucial orders in 2017

From making privacy a fundamental right to declaring instant triple talaq invalid, the Supreme Court passed some landmark judgments in the year 2017. The year also saw dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar walking out free from jail in the Noida double murder case. The Delhi high court upheld death sentence to four accused in the December 16 gangrape case. (READ STORY)

Interest in the dictonary definition of feminism may be spiked by news events, stories, entertainment.

The American dictionary Merriam-Webster named Feminism the word of the year. Defined as ‘the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes’, feminism defeated “complicit” in online searches, particularly after the global Women’s March and revelations about Harvey Weinstein. The reported lookup for the F-word was up 70 per cent. Interest in the dictonary definition of feminism may be spiked by news events, stories, entertainment. But as the US dictionary says, “when a single word is looked up in great volume, and also stands out as one associated with several different important stories, we can learn something about ourselves through the prism of vocabulary.” (READ STORY)

In one sense, the closed conference was a space reclaimed by Dalit women for Dalit women, free of the influence of non-Dalit feminists and Dalit men who failed to represent their voices.

Voices from the Dalit Women Speak Out conferenceImpromptu collective jigs, the beats of Parai drums, cheering, rousing applauses to invocations of ‘Hamari Azadi Hamare Haath’, and a hall that buzzed with many languages yet responded in unison to the call of “compassionate sisterhood grounded on fierce resilience of our foremothers”. This was the resounding vibe from the two-day (Dec 19-20) Dalit Women Speak Out conference, organised by All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM) and Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre, Savitribai Phule Pune University. Senior activist Ruth Manorma outlined this mood of celebration and solidarity when she came on stage and said, “We are strong, self-willed, beautiful outside and inside, we enjoy life and we are the happiest lot. ” (FULL STORY)

The year 2017 belonged to survivors and to them alone. (Source: File Photo)

Google’s most-searched in 2017 were Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer; but whose year was it really?

The annual list, released by Google, which reveals 2017’s most-searched terms and trends helps in understanding the year that was. Apart from the expected names of phones and calamities, it is the list of people who trended this year that gives a sense of how important and significant this particular year was. Three names from the first five names in the list, unsurprisingly are of men, contrary to last year when there were just two men in the list — Donald Trump, the present US President, and Michael Phelps, who swam the last race of his career in 2016 Olympics and won gold. (READ FULL STORY)

Concerted efforts to emblazon Indian cuisine on the world map were marred by bans on certain foods. Myriad trends ran parallel to one another — some much needed, others not so much

2017 look back: Chew on This

Perhaps, in retaliation to the ubiquity of rainbow-coloured, glitter-dusted food, edibles across the globe got a goth makeover this year. The monochromatic fixation was courtesy an ingredient called activated charcoal, also known as activated carbon or coconut ash, produced by heating coconut shells until they carbonise and are then processed with steam. Introduced by the fast-food giant Burger King in 2015 in India, activated charcoal was seen lending an inky hue to desserts, detoxifying drinks and breads. (READ STORY HERE)

WATCH VIDEO: Opinion | How The BJP Painted India Saffron In 2017

A still from movie S Durga.

S Durga no-show to nepotism debate: Unsavoury, avoidable episodes that made news this year

Even though Sexy Durga was rechristened as S Durga (pictured above), the film was still removed by the Information & Broadcasting Ministry from the list of movies selected by the Indian Panorama Jury for the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa. Ravi Jadhav’s Nude, too, was dropped. Even after the Kerala High Court instructed the Ministry and IFFI to screen S Durga, they did not comply on the grounds that the CBFC saw red in its certified version. (FULL STORY)

Here’s all that went viral but turned out to be a hoax in 2017. (Source: File Photo)

FAKE NEWS ALERT! 15 hoax stories that people almost believed in 2017

It’s disturbing how fake news pretty much ruled the Internet on multiple occasions. A trend of fake news being widely shared across social media platforms right from Twitter to Facebook and WhatsApp was witnessed many times, to the extent that “fake news” was also named word of the year by Collins Dictionary due to its widespread use around the world. (READ STORY)

Bollywood’s top 10 underrated movies of 2017: The year was all about powerful, earthy cinema.

Bollywood’s top 10 underrated movies of 2017

2017 has been a year of subtle and groundbreaking art, as far as Hindi cinema is concerned. Be it Rajkummar Rao’s Trapped, Konkana Sen Sharma’s A Death in the Gunj or the Adil Hussain starrer Mukti Bhawan; Indian cinema has bloomed and blossomed these past 12 months, and how! But not all these wonderful movies received the kind of spotlight they deserved. (10 Bollywood films deserving more accolades)

Top 10 Hollywood films of 2017

Top 10 Hollywood films of 2017

Performance of Hollywood movies at the box office was remarkably awful this year, particularly taking into account the fact that this year saw a larger number of long-awaited releases, many of which (The Mummy and Justice League come to mind) fell absolutely flat at the box office, but there were some welcome and unexpected successes too. Wonder Woman and The Big sick, for instance. All in all, though, this year is being considered by trade analysts as a particularly bad year for Hollywood. (Top 10 Hollywood movies this year)

WATCH VIDEO: Feminism | How India Fared In It’s Gender Battles In 2017

We look back at 2017’s five best films.

Roundup of the best Bollywood films of 2017

If 2016 was somewhat lukewarm for Bollywood, both in terms of the quality of cinema being produced and the box-office revenues, 2017 was no better. The Khans, on whom the industry relies for much of its ticket sales, failed to make an impact. Each had a release, except Shah Rukh Khan. He had two. The unexpected poor performance of Tubelight interrupted Salman Khan’s dream run at the box-office while Secret Superstar was a minnow compared to Aamir Khan’s staggering record-breakers. (Best Hindi films)

Indian men’s hockey team hit the refresh button mid-year after former coach Roelant Oltmans was sacked. (File photo)

A year of disparate halves for Indian hockey

2017 wasn’t a very spectacular year for the Indian hockey, both men and women’s teams gave mediocre performances that saw them end with sixth and 10th World Rankings respectively. Why we say it wasn’t the best of years is because the men’s hockey team also began the year at the 6th position while the women’s team jumped meager two places from 12th to sit on the 10th spot. (READ STORY)

Against the disappointment of the veterans, the youngsters got up and made a name for themselves.

Indian Tennis in 2017: One step forward, two steps back

ndian tennis has relied upon performances of doubles players when it comes to sitting down and analysing the year gone by. It normally features the usually consistent Sania Mirza, big serving Rohan Bopanna and Leander Paes pushing boundaries even at an age when players are involved in coaching activity or swap the tennis racket for commentary microphones. (READ STORY)

Coaches of the Utkal Express lie by the railway tracks in Khatauli, Muzzafarnagar in Uttar Pradesh after more than six bogies of the train derailed leading to deaths of more than 20 people in August. Express Photo by Praveen Khanna

2017: 10 powerful photos by Indian Express photographers

Best photos from 2017: From the Gorakhpur tragedy where dozens of children died, to violence in Jammu and Kashmir, here we present the ten most powerful images that dominated the headlines this year. (SEE PICS)