MINT: 'Rajagopalachari’s ‘Swarajya’ to be relaunched soon'

[Rakhal DAVE]

(relevant for liberal thinkers)

http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/DwmLpRVJAHcanTLOrwtN2J/Rajagopalacharis-Swarajya-to-be-relaunched-soon.html

>Explaining the mission of the magazine in its early days,
>Rajagopalachari, popularly known as Rajaji, wrote: “There is before
>the country the great problem of how to secure welfare without
>surrendering the individual to be swallowed up by the State, how to
>get the best return for the taxes the people pay and how to preserve
>spiritual values while working for better material standards of life.
>This journal will serve all these purposes.”

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 09:13:36 +0800
From: Venkatraman Anantha Nageswaran <jeev...@gmail.com>
Subject: MINT: 'Rajagopalachari’s ‘Swarajya’ to be relaunched soon'

http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/DwmLpRVJAHcanTLOrwtN2J/Rajagopalacharis-Swarajya-to-be-relaunched-soon.html

Wed, Sep 17 2014. 11 51 PM IST

Rajagopalachari’s ‘Swarajya’ to be relaunched soon

Famous for arguing the case for the Indian political Right, the
magazine is being revived after 34 years

Swarajya was founded by Rajagopalachari in 1956.

New Delhi: Swarajya, a 58-year-old liberal magazine founded by freedom
fighter and India’s last Governor-general C. Rajagopalachari, which
became famous for arguing the case for the Indian political Right, is
being revived after 34 years.

Kovai Media, a company registered in Coimbatore, will revive the
magazine in both online and print versions. While the digital daily
called Swarajyamag.com will see its beta version being launched in the
next few days, the print version will be launched as a monthly in
January 2015.

The relaunch takes place under what many would argue are well-suited,
if not near perfect, political and economic circumstances, with much
of the mainstream intellectual opinion in India having swung to the
right of centre.

Sandipan Deb, editorial director of Swarajya, said that the weekly
magazine launched by Rajagopalachari in 1956 was the first to argue
against Nehruvian socialism. “We are now re-launching it as a liberal,
opinions magazine,” he said. Media website Newslaundry first reported
on the re-launch of Swarajya.

Deb was founding editor of the English weekly news and current affairs
magazine OPEN, editor at The Financial Express newspaper and managing
editor of the general news magazine Outlook. Deb writes a column for
livemint.com. T.R. Vivek, editor of the personal finance magazine
Finepolis, will join Swarajya as executive editor.

Explaining the mission of the magazine in its early days,
Rajagopalachari, popularly known as Rajaji, wrote: “There is before
the country the great problem of how to secure welfare without
surrendering the individual to be swallowed up by the State, how to
get the best return for the taxes the people pay and how to preserve
spiritual values while working for better material standards of life.
This journal will serve all these purposes.”

Deb said, “Swarajya will be an authoritative voice of reason
representing the liberal centre-right point of view. In its second
coming, the magazine will remain committed to the ideals of individual
liberty, freedom of expression and enterprise.”

For the digital media product, the company plans to offer tablet and
smartphone versions and provide daily commentaries, blogs,
insta-opinions, interactive multimedia content, podcasts, videos and
other web exclusives. “Swarajya’s focus will be on what we have
identified as the social, political, economic and cultural life of
India. We will be a ‘viewspaper’ on the web and in print with a
serious arts and culture section,” Deb added.

The rights for brand Swarajya have been bought from the Chennai-based
publishing house Bharathan which publishes the popular Tamil magazine
Kalki. The company has also got the rights to 40,000 pages of content
from Swarajya which carried articles by figures such as theDalai Lama
—the Tibetan spiritual leader wrote on his escape from China—and late
president R. Venkataraman.

The magazine’s slow decline began after Rajaji passed away in 1972 and
it folded up in 1980. According to Deb, although Rajagopalachari was
the patron of the magazine, he did not hold any official position in
it. “But he proof-read and subbed the articles, wrote editorials under
‘Dear India’ (a popular column) and ideologically dictated the
magazine,” Deb said.

The magazine will now be part of Kovai Media, set up by entrepreneurs
Prasanna Vishwanathan and Amarnath Govindarajan in 2009, that operates
the web portal www.centreright.in (CRI). CRI will be absorbed in the
new venture and the stake of the founders of Kovai will get diluted
with new shareholders, including angel investors, putting money into
the company.

Deb did not divulge the amount of money being invested in the business
but claimed the second round of funding has been lined up for March
2015. “The investors have a profit motive and they are also
ideologically aligned with the product. However, no political party is
an investor in this venture,” he said.

The editorial advisory board of Swarajya includes Jerry Rao, an
advocate of liberal centre right thought and the founder and former
CEO of IT company MphasiS, economists Surjit S. Bhalla and Bibek
Debroy, and Swapan Dasgupta, veteran journalist and a voice from the
Indian right.
Kovai expects the digital version of the magazine to generate revenue
from subscriptions. It also hopes to extend the brand into events by
inviting some of the world’s leading thinkers in disciplines like
politics, technology and philosophy.

“Swarajya will be fiercely independent, we will not be politically
partisan. It is a not a mouthpiece of any political party or
individual,” said Deb.