Here’s your chance to vote for the newsmaker of 2020

Newsrooms can be calm and boring, or crazy and happening. On many days, ideas flow like rivulets, meeting each other at different places before the confluence. At the river mouth you find the most polished of pebbles. We call them stories. On some days, ideas, fuelled by disagreements, fly fast and furious — like the high energy particles in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — thoughts colliding at the speed of light. Not for nothing they called what they detected in LHC in 2018 the ‘God particle’.

It was such a high-energy day in The Times of India newsroom last week when we debated on who should be the newsmaker of the year in politics in Tamil Nadu. We debated not just the names and reasons, but even the criteria for the selection. Should it be someone — or something — who held sway throughout the year or can it be someone who made a momentary, if big, splash? The ‘God particle’ has eluded us so far, so here’s a request for you, dear reader, to help us find it.

I present some of the candidates we considered and parts of the debate — for and against. A point: The newsmaker need not be the best performer or a hero; he/ she/ it should be someone — or something — who occupied our thoughts, if not impacted us the most, in ways good, bad or ugly. The shortlist:

The novel coronavirus: The pathogen that changed our lives — and deaths — as none other this year affected politics too. Politicians and their parties were forced to adopt digital ways to campaign. The virus would have been the unanimous choice but for that it isn’t specific to Tamil Nadu. Remember, we are looking for a newsmaker of TN.

You and me: Faced with the biggest challenge of the century, we refused to give up. The politician didn’t come knocking at our door, but he did spam our mail box. Yet we went about our lives with resilience and renewed vigour. Is the common man — and the woman and everyone in between — the newsmaker of the year?
Edappadi K Palaniswami: Born out of an internal crisis in his party in February 2017, the chief minister had overcome several hurdles for close to four years, but it was in 2020 that he proved in no uncertain terms that he is the boss of the party and the government — and hence the AIADMK’s chief minister candidate for the 2021 assembly election. But was he the person most talked about?

Rajinikanth: For most of the year, the actor remained unseen, unheard and undecided, but towards the end he created an impression of aborting his political plans before suddenly altering the anti-climax by announcing his decision to launch a party in January, 2021. His brief appearances and statements had been enough to spark speculations of political reconfigurations. But, as a colleague asked, wouldn’t giving him the newsmaker tag be like giving an employee a high rating for a good performance at the fag-end of the year, most of which he had spent slumbering?

Kamal Haasan: If perseverance is a criterion for the title, Kamal should be a prime contender for it. Despite the MNM’s lacklustre show in the 2019 general elections, Kamal soldiered on through the year, building his organisation and keeping his conversation with the people through media. His party bagged a former bureaucrat (Santhosh Babu) who refused to sign on the dotted line of government corruption, and remained steadfast in its promise to provide a clean alternative.

M K Stalin: He is the undisputed leader of the DMK and the opposition coalition. This year may mark the last one in his long wait to be the chief minister, but does that make him the newsmaker?

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