My vote for the person of the year 2010 goes to...

It is that time of the year when media organizations in India are busy choosing, naming the best person of the year 2010 in fields like politics, business, sports and entertainment. Year end is a perfect time for media to reflect on the year gone by and provide their verdict on who stole the show in various fields and who is that one person who will walk away with the overall "Person of the Year" honours.

While media is busy with their choice, considering the exceptional roller coaster year we have witnessed in all walks of life I thought I too should join the bandwagon and choose my person of the year 2010. Be it sports, politics or entertainment we have had a fair share of scandals, scams and success.

Scams, Obama, WikiLeaks & Yana make 2010 spicy

It is as if we are a country of dichotomy. We were hit by numerous embarrassing moments before the Common Wealth Games (CWG) 2010 including the alleged fraud by the organising committee. Yet when the show began and Indian athletes put up a fabulous performance, the pre-event horror was forgotten.

We were repeatedly hit by one scandal or the other supposedly masterminded by either a smart bureaucrat or a rogue politician or a shrewd lobbyist. Some of these have now reached never before kind of proportions both in terms of masterminding the plot as well as the amount of money it has deprived the exchequer.

We, the quintessential "Common Man" as the famous cartoonist R K Laxman calls us have been subjected to all – cartel in mundane and day to day affairs things like onion that led to prices skyrocketing to very macro affair like the 2G spectrum scam or the CWG scam. We have borne the brunt of it all and yet we have tremendous patience and resilience... We have absorbed all shocks and going by our resilience we will continue to take in many more shocks as they happen in the future.

Therefore my choice of best "person of the year" is the Common Man. We have developed tremendous maturity to separate the good from the bad. We have tremendous faith in our judiciary than in our politicians or bureaucrats. We may not be aware of our fundamental rights and duties or may not have done enough to exercise it, but some among us have selflessly worked to place in our hands a deadly weapon like the 'Right to Information Act' which is being actively used by many others today to nail specific issues and instances.

We are world's largest democracy... Our politicians have constantly fooled, conned and cheated us, the citizens. Yet it does not affect us too long. We not only quickly bounce back from these but also are willing to give another chance to the same politician by electing him again.

Long live the Common Man. Let the New Year usher in greater sense of wisdom and intelligence in all of us so that we emerge even stronger through all the mess and scams our politicians will create in 2011.