Revolution, elections and a baby hippo, this was the year in Asia

A student revolution in Bangladesh. A stunning electoral rebuke for India’s once unassailable Narendra Modi. A rare corruption conviction in Singapore and political chaos in Japan and South Korea. Asia in 2024 was characterised by turbulence and surprises.

Some developments were easier to predict. Asia’s tycoons grew richer even as ordinary people struggled under rising living costs. Scammers kept on hammering the Asian public, North Korea’s nuclear-armed leader Kim Jong-un continued provoking his southern neighbour and Myanmar’s junta refused to yield power – although its losses are mounting as the country’s civil war grinds on.

It was another year of superlatives for Asia’s environment – but the ones no nation wants to hear: the hottest on record, the heaviest rain ever, the most powerful storms … From India to Japan, Asia contended with floods, bad air and searing heat.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Taylor Swift mesmerised Singapore, a film about ageing got Asian audiences weeping – and earned an Oscar’s shortlist – and a chubby hippo in a Thai zoo blew up the internet.

Bangladesh

In July, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina unleashed her security forces on massive student-led protests across Bangladesh, killing hundreds. It was a crackdown that spectacularly backfired. On August 5 she fled to India after protests that began over contentious job quotas billowed into a call for an end to her corruption-riddled 15-year period helming the country.

As Hasina loyalists were driven from office and into self-exile, an interim government under Nobel laureate Muhammand Yunus was tasked with restoring law and order and paving the way for fresh elections.