Sunday will never be the same again for the Indian! Nine months of hard work, five languages – viz English, Hindi, Bangla (a tribute to my father Malay Chaudhuri’s commitment to Bengal), Tamil & Gujarati – a team of 68 editorial (with Sharad Gupta & Vijay Simha leading them), design and production stalwarts, one Sutanu Guru and one Satyajit Datta... Add to it Abhimanyu’s sales team, which tirelessly worked and told us that we can go ahead without worrying about revenue streams, Siddarth’s passion for quantifiable results, Prasoon’s intellectual support, Prashanto’s intelligent compromise (in toning down his lifestyle team’s language in order to make it easier to understand) and A.Sandeep’s quiet confidence (that he will step in, in the last 7 days and have it rolling, come what may!)... And you have a product that I can confidently say is absolutely world class! World class in terms of contents, world class in terms of analytical abilities, world class in terms of commitment to bring forth relevant news, and very importantly, world class in terms of a never seen and experienced before reader friendly design! I hope all that I write is what you agree with and feel delighted about, because that has been our endeavour in all the ventures we have ever undertaken.I am sure you might be wondering why another news magazine! Are our competitors bad? No, not at all! They give news from their perspective, and I’ve grown up enjoying reading, for example, India Today, if I were to name at least one. I also distinctly remember loving reading The Illustrated Weekly of India and Sunday, though they closed down somewhere while I grew up. And of late, Tehelka has had me involved very often. Then why did I start another one? Well, I guess it was a natural progression for me, and our group on the whole. We all feel strongly on issues of public concern, and restless when nothing is being done, when things should perhaps be on fire... Sadly, most media in India exists primarily to serve the establishment (and big private advertisers, as long as they aren’t anti-establishment) and preserve a status quo; and to maintain a deep conspiracy of silence when they see something that violates the same (for more views on media, you should read Preity Zinta’s interview in this issue, as her scintillating views on media represent almost all that I might’ve wished to express); and we don’t like this slavish, intellectually compromised stand most media houses take, shamelessly! So, in the world of mass communication, after starting a public relations firm (ICPAR) to get our views across to mainstream media more effectively, an ad agency (Planman Life) to convey various other thoughts more dramatically, after writing books, starting our monthly columns India Today and Tomorrow in all the leading dailies of India, starting our economy focused business magazine called Business & Economy and marketing centric magazine 4Ps Business and Marketing, a mainstream news weekly was the obvious next step for a dynamic group like ours, which has always been on the move. Genuinely, we’ve never ventured into any area where we have nothing to contribute; ergo, we did feel we had a lot to contribute to the way news was imparted through magazines. I hope it is a thrilling journey for our own readers to very soon realise, the true meaning of “world class” – a benchmark The Sunday Indian would strive for, if not beat, week after week, in order to become the nation’s greatest news weekly. We will consider our mission successful if – with our intellectually stimulating contents, internationally & nationally renowned columnists, and non compromised, sharp and incisive analysis – we are able to positively influence thought processes of the next generation over decades to come, and make India a country of more humane & concerned citizens, with a perspective that questions and challenges the status quo, instead of accepting it blindly; a perspective, which is restless till it fulfils the great Indian dream of a nation free of ill-health, illiteracy, poverty and judicial & political bankruptcy... With these thoughts on the eve of the birth anniversary of the greatest leader ever born in India, M. K. Gandhi, I feel proud to welcome you to the first issue of The Sunday Indian. We desperately await your feedback, while steadily & subconsciously The Sunday Indian grows on you and becomes the new addiction of the smart Indian!
86% Indians fear losing their jobs due to the Pandemic as per a recent online survey. The fear has completely stopped economic activities and spending. We must remove the fear and start the economy. For that we need to guarantee everyone that jobs or no job, they will be economically secure through a minimum unemployment allowance (double of which should be the minimum wages). It requires a simple four step process: 1. Create an online database of job seekers based on their Adhaar Card number. 2. Make it totally illegal to employ anyone for any kind of job without registering his/her Aadhaar Card number. 3. The moment Adhaar Card number is fed in the list of employed, it gets automatically removed from the job seekers register and they stop getting unemployment allowance. 4. Everyone getting unemployment allowance will have to necessarily do 4 hours of social and community service as directed by the registry. Employers will also know who is seeking jobs where and their qualificat...
Comments