Why We Love To Hate <i>Outlook</i>

I have been reading Outlook since its first issue. But slowly it turned to encouraging anti-India propaganda in the garb of anti-establishment ideas, one example being 36 pages in one issue to Arundhati Roy. I do not believe it was freedom of expression, it was sedition. Why should we suffer self-promoted intellectuals like Ashish Khetan, Kumar Ketkar, Mani Shankar Aiyar etc? Even your editorial contributors don’t have balanced views. All issues of Outlook are mostly full of negativity, cynicism and strong anti-Hindu views. For you, industrialists are not wealth-, revenue- or job-creators but exploiters. Votebank politicians exploiting caste and religion are feted, but those who talk development are derided. You talk of rights only, but forget duties. In a globalised world, you praise Communist China, but won’t allow the same practices in India. You talk about exploitation of labour, but never about skill upgradation and productivity. Please be more balanced, you have no right to subject readers to such cynicism.

Krishna Kumar Saboo, Ranchi

Why does your magazine have to be so hopelessly one-sided? Do you have to kill holy cows so that you can call yourselves ‘different’? As a reader, what I would like are balanced articles giving different perspectives and respecting them. The reader is then capable of deciding for himself. Content merely to create hype is not at all welcome. I do hope you can make Outlook more representative and exciting for the discerning reader. I find the magazine disturbing. Don’t you want to be called ‘that great magazine’ instead of ‘oh, that biased rag’! You decide.

Radhakrishnan Ananthnarayan, On e-mail

I have been a subscriber of Outlook almost since its inception. I am disappointed that the overall standard of the magazine leaves much to be desired. Irrespective of the leaning of the editorial team, readers of the magazine expect a balanced presentation of various issues. This is where the disappointment comes in. Often personal biases of your editorial team come through. We expect Outlook to raise the standard of journalism, including get-up, proofreading et al.

Surendra Garg, calcutta

Outlook’s weekly schedule troubles me. Since I’m a slow reader and also spend most of my spare time samp­ling the output of entities like Vijay Mallya and Johnnie Walker, I rarely get past the initial 50-60% of the magazine before the next issue arrives. I thereby regularly miss out on the last few pages of each issue, where Outlook can justifiably put up the same notice that apparel stores display dur­ing the sale season, like ‘Ladies clothing—80% off’. I therefore save all my copies of half-read Outlook. Now, alth­ough I’m not diabetic, my better half thinks that all sweet things in medical college, including arm candy, are bad for my well-being. Hence, every now and then, citing lack of space in our apartment and lack of liq­uidity in our bank account, she dispo­ses of the magazines. I am thus dep­rived not only of mental titillation, but also a chance to update my kno­w­ledge of the human body, which I had originally picked up from Fifty Shades of Gray’s Anatomy in medical college.

Brajendra Singh, Delhi

The Vocal Chord

Stuck with a three-year subs­cri­ption taken during happier times, I feel Outlook will be a good bait on the killing fields of Afghanistan! The magazine has been reduced to a self-serving newsletter meant to prop up the ex-editors’ credentials in the corridors of powers that may have been. It works on the belief that ‘if I accuse you first, how can I be guilty’ and so takes the easy way out of always opposing anything that reflects majoritarian opinion. It’s also the only way the magazine has been able to position itself as being niche while serving the ‘vocal minority of self-attested intellectuals’. Who wants to get lost in a crowd when I can stand apart because I am niche? Except the crowd is all your subscribers.

Amal, Gurgaon

Sudheendra Kulkarni and I are on the same page. We Indians have an agonising habit of criticising others. The Outlook team and some of its contributing writers are known to be a bunch of ‘better-knowers’. You’ll have a Cyc­lops-eyed view on Hindus. For aeons we have welcomed foreigners: Aryans, Jews, Christians, Arabs, Persians, Afgh­ans, Mongols, Turks. More than 90 per cent Muslims are converts, yet they want to lord over us. Finally, we have a man like Modi who can deliver us from the fangs of the Congress and goons like Mulayam, Laloo and cohorts. It’s time Outlook shed its bigoted, stentorian, anti-Hindutva one-track mindedness.

Avinash Avasthi, Etawah

Outlook invites readers to take part in its 20th anniversary celebrations. Send us your bouquets and, more importantly, your brickbats. E-mail your entry to editor [AT] outlookindia [DOT] com