Internet on Independence Day (1995)

2015: NASA Flies by Pluto
• Date: July 14
• Location: 3 billion miles from Earth
NASA spacecraft New Horizons becomes the first human-made object to fly past and observe the dwarf planet Pluto. New Horizons sends back stunning photographs of this enigmatic and distant member of the solar system, including images of a mountain range and massive icebergs floating in frozen nitrogen. New Horizons is now en route to the Kuiper Belt, a massive asteroid belt at the far reaches of the solar system.
Money is for nothing (2016)

The problem with bold, but simple ideas to complex problems is that they rarely end up solving the latter – and, in fact, likely end up causing collateral damage. The sudden move by the government to demonetize all high value currency notes on November 8, 2016 – the move was initially touted as a “surgical strike” on black money, that old peeve of all Indians – did not unearth any black money (with almost all the money in the system coming back into banks), and instead caused tremendous pain to poor people, the lower middle class, and small enterprises. It did give India’s digital economy a boost – and the number and volume of UPI transactions have made India an efficient and advanced fin-tech market, something that may have taken longer without demonetization – and that soon became its post-facto raison d’etre.

One country, one tax (2017)
India’s federal structure resulted in a complex indirect tax regime, with states levying a range of diverse taxes on goods and services. It was clear that a national-level indirect tax regime, that replaced state taxes, would make it easier to do business – and, if structured well, expand the tax base. The Goods and Services Tax or GST was that reform and it came into effect on July 1, 2017. Its creation required states to give up their rights to tax (everything other than fuel and liquor), although they were promised an assured growth in revenue for five years, with the shortfall being made good by sin taxes. The high rate of guaranteed growth (14%), regional political considerations that kept tax rates down (and required frequent changes), and the intervening pandemic meant that the new tax regime took time to stablise , but the consistency and magnitude of recent GST collections suggests that this has finally happened.