22 and still seeking the missing stories in India

Time flies in our magazine. It is an immersive experience. The stories and interviews, the people we meet — they pull us in. Barely is one deep dive over than it’s time for the next. It is easy to feel overwhelmed. Unpacking so many different lives and concerns can be challenging. But when we set out 22 years ago, we decided we would run a magazine that would need us to be fully in. Not for the money, not for the glory — but to discover India our way and take what we find to our readers.

As ventures go it was a shaky one right from the start. No one gave it half a chance of survival. Who would want to read such stories? Frankly, we could only guess. But we knew for sure that India was made up of more stories than were getting told. We were happy to pull them together and tell them in ways that could be easily understood — with good pictures, minus jargon and without taking sides.

We were ready to be out there seeking and 22 years later we still are. It has been a fascinating journey. But we haven’t been on this journey by ourselves. We should thank our readers first of all because without them whom would we be publishing for? A publication is nourished by the response it gets. Letters come in routinely, among them those that take a swipe at us, which is just fine. Every subscription bought helps us go a little further. We should also thank individuals and entities of the corporate sector for supporting our work over time. We are fortunate to be able to count on Forbes Marshall, Kirloskar Oil Engines, Thermax, Tata Steel, DCB Bank, NIIT Foundation and others. Their advertisements appear in our magazine and we acknowledge them in this special anniversary issue. To the Azim Premji Foundation we owe a special debt of gratitude for being there as a steadying hand.

R.A. Mashelkar, Kiran Karnik, Sanjaya Baru, Dileep Ranjekar and Arun Maira have always been there to reach out to as well as reach out on our behalf. We attach great value to columns by Venkatesh Dutta, Chandra Bhushan, Meghna Uniyal and Sumita Ghose.

Each of our anniversary issues has had a theme. We chose healthcare this time because it should get more importance in an economy with aspirations. We have an interesting collection of special articles and personal accounts. We appreciate the effort put in by the contributors.

In the media it is possible to do the staple thing and get by. In
Civil Society we try to go beyond the predictable and surprise our readers. India being richly diverse and composite, we only have to look to find.