The Weekend Fix: 10 pieces that will help you understand 2018 – and look ahead to the new year

1. Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express offers a number of theses on where the Indian state will go from here, from the idea of income support becoming standard to re-opening the debate over the state and industrial policy.
   
2. Factchecker.in lists out the 10 “biggest lies” of the year, including perennially false claims on Aadhaar and how little has actually been spent on Smart Cities.
   
3. Quietly but surely, Chinese apps are taking over the Indian smartphone landscape. FactorDaily kept its focus squarely on this development through the year, and has picked some of its best stories on this Chinese “invasion” here.
   
4. If you need a recap of 2018, starting with news of a massive banking fraud and ending with political upheaval, Aakaar Patel has you covered in the Business Standard.
   
5. Instead of just looking ahead to 2019, TCA Raghavan in Open looks back at 1919, the year of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and examines what that event may tell us about where India is today.
   
6. Mint Lounge puts together a “tête-bêche” year-end issue, with eight essays on the year’s most significant topics accompanied by eight short stories to put them in perspective.
   
7. “Sisterhood somehow did not appear to be a natural womanly instinct. Or so it seemed. Almost proving the veracity of a sexist Malayalam adage: randu thala chernalum, naalu mola cherilla (Two heads can be put together but it is impossible for four breasts to come together). Then came 2018.” Anita Nair, in the Indian Express, writes about 2018 and #MeToo.
8. Max Read, in NY Magazine, picks up on one of the major themes of the year, fake news and a shift in the very nature of the internet, and takes a look at how much of the web actually is fake.
9. Picking menstruation as its issue of the year, Outlook runs this essay by Ruma Satwik and Ambarish Satwik on how period pollution is a myth: “What it does in biology is cleansing, a monthly exorcism of pathogens. And by all means, make love.”
10. While a bit Western-centric, Vox’s 2018-in-five-minutes video will serve to remind you how long this year actually has been and how much turmoil awaits the world in 2019.
    

While you are here, do also check out the Scroll.in video team’s year-end specials, including interviews with the newsmakers of the year.

• 2018, The Year That Was: Catching up with India’s “golden girl” P V Sindhu
• As more countries hold elections, is the world becoming less democratic?
• Debate on integrating Sentinelese, racist & ignorant, says Land of the Naked People author.
• From a list to a movement, how 2018 became the year of reckoning for India’s powerful men.
  
• Making of the Mary Kom legend. How a farm labourer’s daughter punched her way to boxing glory.

The Reel put together a look back at cinema in 2018:

• The year’s best songs (and Arijit Singh is still the undisputed king).
  
• The year’s best characters, and the actors who played them.
  
• The Bollywood remix reached saturation point (but shows no sign of going away).
  

In the Backstory series, reporters offer you a glimpse of what stories are like beyond the headlines.

• When I dropped my notebook to hug a grieving woman in Maharashtra.
  
• When I finally met the Bangladeshi I grew up hearing about.
  
• When I was moved by the kindness of strangers in flood-hit Kodagu.
  
• When a politician from Nagaland made me a generous offer.
  
• When I realised I could help with relief while reporting on Kerala floods.
  
• Intercaste love often ends in death. But what happens when the couple survives?
• What I learned from the silence of fellow journalists sued by Anil Ambani.
  
• The intensity of caste animosity in this small Rajasthani town left me shocked.
  

And finally, read this year-end note from Scroll.in editor Naresh Fernandes, on how justice was the animating principle that guided much of our reportage over 2018 and why journalism will continue to matter.