THERE MUST BE SOMETHING about the advent of any new year that people as diverse as the residents of this planet think it imperative to wish each other a Happy New Year. All that really happens is that our planet circum-ambulates the sun, just as it has been doing for almost 4.543 billion years! They did it again in 2023 and told everyone they knew, even strangers, Happy New Year.

What gives you hope for the new year? What scares a person about the new year? How do you say Happy New Year in a world where Trump or Trumpian thought continues to have sway?

How do you say Happy New Year to those in Jalandhar’s Latifpura, the one’s waging an uneven battle in Punjab’s Zira, or to farm workers, marginal farmers, heavily exploited industrial workers or those whose lives are ruled by economic policy formulations happening in institutions situated in far-flung countries?

The good people of Ukraine would also be wishing for a Happy New Year. We know we are living through a Black Swan moment in history. That Putin is in Ukraine, that China is in India, that war hangs over Europe, that spiking food and fuel prices are killing millions, that Covid is back, that we have a very uncertain post-pandemic path, that global recession seems imminent.

We know that the world is talking about a darkening global outlook, that 2022 saw the highest global inflation in 50 years, that we are living in the most aggressive monetary tightening cycle in nearly 40 years, that we have the strongest US dollar in 20 years, that the US Fed will continue raising policy rates.

We are wishing each other a Happy New Year at a time when the country has made peace with regular news headlines about whether or not a Muslim can say his prayer in the open. We are living in times of worsening ideological divisions, deepening social and communal cleavages, and a widening political chasm.

What is it about this moment in the passage of time and changing of the calendar that we are so hopeful and say: Happy New Year?

Watch this debate with rather a lot of guests: Prof Apoorvanand, Prof Lallan Baghel, Prof Akshay Kumar, Prof Mohd Khalid, Prof Manjit Singh, Prof BS Ghuman, Prof Ronki Ram, Activists Soumya Thakur, Dr PyaraLalGarg, Sr Journalist Hamir Singh, Prof Harjeshwar Pal Singh, Political Activists Rajeev Godara, Kanwaljit Singh, Sandeep Kumar, Ideas’ Historian & Punjabi Language & Culture Activist Dr Sumail Singh Sidhu, Dr Sumandeep Kaur, and some others.

The debate was curated by senior journalist SP Singh.