Intelligent Pune takes a break

Dear Friends, it's time to move on. Intelligent Pune is taking a break after this Friday's issue of Jan 28-Feb 3. Will keep you posted of all that I do after a brief period of introspection. Thanks for your support and good wishes.

cheers and warm rgds

vinita

Following is my editorial:

Slug: In-trospective Pune

Headline: We are taking a break

Dear Readers

Week after week, since the last four years, Intelligent Pune has been in the forefront of relevant, public journalism which has become the need of the hour, especially against the backdrop of media getting coloured beyond the sacred black and white.

Keeping up to the 79 years of legacy of the Prabhat group wherein social and civic journalism has been nurtured, Intelligent Pune was delivered to your doorstep, every Friday. The 24 pages were not merely packed with good stories but went beyond the news columns to turn into citizen campaigns, many of them to the logical end. The Dow Chemical Plant campaign earned a special distinction as the most influential Multi-National Company (MNC) of the world had to bite the dust, as Intelligent Pune procured vital documents under Section 4 of the RTI Act to find out the truth behind permissions given to Dow and the nature of activities (hazardous) it was to conduct in the 100 acre land at Shinde-Vasuli village in Chakan. Thereafter villagers who were `educated’ about the truth by Intelligent Pune converted the campaign into a state wide stir which forced the MNC to walk out of Pune district.

The Pune metro campaign too stirred the entire city and gave some jolting moments for the city administration and our elected representatives as they vouchsafed for the most disastrously planned metro for the city without even reading the Detailed Project Report (DPR) shoddily done by E Sreedharan’s DMRC team. While the metro plan has been sent to the state government in the same disastrous format, the latter has been sitting on the plan – quite naturally so.

Our campaigns to make citizens aware of the bad hygiene and the almost non-existent food safety in restaurants, again through the use of Section 4 of the RTI Act was well appreciated and prompted the Municipal Commissioner to add these aspects in the 2011 vision document and also shortly upload an online citizen complaint form as suggested by Intelligent Pune.

Intelligent Pune has also been an integral part of the Green Pune Movement wherein major campaigns against construction of hills were undertaken. Our thought-provoking stories on issues that directly affects citizens and community news through our neighbourhood stories enlightened readers on what is going on around them, as they were narrated to them in an in-depth and comprehensive manner. There are many such examples of pro-active journalism which all of you are familiar with.

It was indeed a great pleasure bringing out Intelligent Pune to satiate your appetite for meaningful journalism and to give you a sense of belonging to the weekly by making it interactive. We hope we have achieved that to your expectations. Thanks to your encouragement and affection, it has been a very educative experience for us too.

Now, with technological advancement and cut-throat competition, it is time to keep up with the changing times. Hence, now the time has come for Intelligent Pune to re-work itself and come back with a more formidable `avatar.’ Hence, we are taking a break. We are confident that you would understand our compulsions and stand by us when we sprint back.

P.S: Subscribers whose dues are pending due to this break, would receive their cheques in a fortnight.

Vinita Deshmukh

Editor