T R Gopalakrishnan is Consulting Editor at Citizen Matters. Former Editor In Charge of The Week, the country’s leading English weekly newsmagazine, based in Cochin, relocated to Bangalore in 2018.
Born and brought up in Delhi, took a brief stab at engineering at the IIT, Kanpur, but switched to journalism in 1974. As Editor of The Week, was part of the Prime Minister’s media delegation when Atal Behari Vajpayee visited South Africa and Beijing. Was also a special invitee of the South African government prior to their staging their world cup. Was part of a media delegation from developing countries to the US as a special invitee. While at The Week, besides organising the news desk and setting up work systems for ideation and implementation, also did a number of detailed cover stories on a wide range of subjects, business, politics, sports, science and cinema. Main interests are reading and travel.
With slowdown in industries making jobs scarce across the country, a work scheme for urban workers at the grassroots is much needed. And it can be done.
“On paper we are not a hire and fire economy but we seem to be heading there.” Key deliberations on this emerged at a recent webinar co-organised by Citizen Matters.
Most people we spoke with are cautious about how the situation will develop post May 4th, but all pointed to the shortcomings in the present system for providing relief to the poor.