2007 had in store 2 good news for Indians
1) Completion of the Narmada Dam. It took almost 20 years for this highly controversial dam to be constructed, but the good news is that now almost the entire state of arid Gujarat will have drinking water, and large tracks of fertile black soil will get the much needed irrigation water. There shall also be some electricity generation which will pay for the upkeep of the dam, but there are always much simpler alternative to produce it.
I had personally visited the dam site as well as the displaced villages. What I believe that all the problem occurred due to project delays. The government over keen to hand out relief compensation evacuated lots of villages. However the actual submersion of land happened only 15 years after wards. A lot of villagers who were paid and rehabilitated went back to their motherland. Inspired by the protests, many of them actually demanded government to give them the compensation for the second time.
Another problem was that during these 2 decades, the property changed (read upwards) and a lot of property actually changed hands. This made it an accounting nightmare for the under-skilled Babus.
Anyhow I am sure people of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh would benefit from this dam.
2) The second good news is Dr Chitra Bharucha, an Indian-born hematologist, is now heading BBC. For those who always have a mindset that doctors are a misfit outside the hospital and a mechanical engineer a misfit in non engineering streams (read IT) I recomond that they should read a little about how Dr. Chitra proved her caliber.