Writing the year-end edit is often a lonely and onerous task. This is largely because, through the year, magazines have their ups and downs in terms of the quality, merit, credibility, display and power of the stories they run. So, finding the best from among them to feature in a special edition requires exceptional diligence and institutional memory. And the editors of India Legal have been up to their necks in the process of choosing, and dropping, and adding.
The final result in on the cover. Actually the task was both easy as well as excruciatingly difficult. Easy, because most of the stories from which we chose had quality and focus. Difficult, because notwithstanding the editorial merit of the story under consideration, we were faced with the task of determining how accurately the article reflected India Legal’s USP.
There was little doubt in any reader’s mind as soon as our magazine hit the stands with its first edition, that the market was witnessing a genuinely new product that stood out of the clutter. The name itself suggested a whiff of change. The moment you picked it up and began leafing through it, the first impression you received was that contrary to what it sounded like, India legal was not a technical legal manual or a newsstand version of Manupatra. It was, in fact, a hard core newsy, current affairs magazine containing investigations and controversies with a solid legal angle that would be of special interest not only to lawyers and judges—the core audience—but also to general readers, MPs, politicians, students, diplomats and think tanks trying to make sense of how the rule of law, natural justice, judicial precedents, case histories, judicial activism and accountability impacts the day-to-day functioning of modern India, the creature of a long-drawn out, hotly-debated constitutional exercise.
Obviously, we focused, keeping in mind the need to uphold the highest standards of writing on the courts, the Supreme Court and activities of bar associations and councils, ensuring that we missed no developments. Covering stories involving judicial accountabi-lity remained a primary focus. Most of our stories are written by big name journalists from India and abroad. Our special task is to brief them in detail so that they do not miss out on special legal angles or the fundamental legal base of the stories we commission.
In case they fail to meet this requirement, India Legal’s editorial board approaches some of the nation’s senior most lawyers and retired judges to provide us guidance. It is small wonder then—thanks to the magazine’s growing credibility with this difficult-to-please but powerful community—that we were able to carry interviews with the Union Law Minister and the Chief Justice of India on the cover of the same issue of the magazine.
As we have spread our wings and our reach with the support of a portal run by a special team and are bringing more and more legal stories to our sister concern—APN-TV—and are planning to add an additional channel—India Legal TV—to our group, we have expanded our reporting and editorial staff to include law students and trained lawyers who will report not only from the capital but from every major city and region in India.
Ultimately, our magazine is not for, of, and by lawyers—even though this community is now increasingly involved in its content creation. It is about justice, exposing corruption and charlatans, taking a critical stance on legal matters of national and constitutional importance. It was in this spirit that we ran a lead editorial on the Supreme Court’s prolix ruling on the National Judicial Appointments Commission, titled “Your Lordships, We Beg To Differ.”
Actually, if you look at any major story that has caught national attention in the recent past or currently, it stems either from the courts and judiciary, or contains a major legal angle. Let’s name a few—the NJAC debate, the Nirbhaya story which led to the passing of the Juvenile Justice Act, the CBI’s raid on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s office and the attacks and counter attacks on the corruption within the DDCA, stringent rape laws, the visitors’ list in the former CBI chief’s diary, the still-continuing attempts to implicate Prime Minister Modi and his number two Amit Shah in the 2002 Gujarat riots, the brouhaha over Netaji Bose’s files, Yakub Memon’s hanging and the recrudescence of the death penalty debate, the Supreme Court’s activism as well as initial steps taken by the Kejriwal government to check diesel pollution levels and the Nestle noodles debate.
These are the stories the nation is talking about. These are the stories we covered. Reading them again they are definitely not old wine in new bottles. They are new wines in new bottles. Let me cite an example from this issue.
Veteran Kalyani Shankar has penned an analysis of why it is always premature to write off the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty no matter how politically down and out it may be. Where we value-add to this story is a box item on scams and intrigues that Congress’ First Family and the party have weathered. Here are some of them: In 1966 Ram Manohar Lohia charged in Parliament that Indira Gandhi had accepted an expensive mink coat from shipping magnate Dharam Teja. In 1971, scandal rocked Mrs Gandhi again when it was alleged that the SBI’s chief cashier was instructed to hand over `60 lakhs to a “messenger” of Mrs Gandhi, Sorab Nagarwala. There were other scams—Maruti favouritism (1977), Bofors (1987), 2G Spectrum (2008), Vadra-DLF controversy (2012), chopper controversy (2013)… and the ongoing National Herald case.
India Legal has been on top of all the recent newsbreaks covering them from the very special perspective of a new avatar in journalism.