I feel proud, delighted, and exhilarated to announce that The Indian News is completing three years of its existence with this edition. When we started three years ago, no one in the team was sure how long this journey will last and today three years later, despite weathering all sort of storms we stand strong and tall. Right from the beginning it was never easy, especially when you start with a team of novices, with little to no practical exposure of print medium, except for a common zeal amongst all, to make it happen. Like anyone else, we had our own lows and highs and all those initial hiccups and then Corona struck.

Corona pandemic was a once in a lifetime tragedy, it very quickly engulfed the whole world in its grip. Since it was so sudden and had no trace of any history or any clue about how to contain, it very quickly spread throughout the world. Its little over a year now since it first started in December 2019, before spreading all over the globe. The governments of different countries had no idea of how to stop this contagious virus from spreading and the best way found was to start putting people behind the closed doors in the safety of their own homes. Hence an array of lockdowns started worldwide that put the entire world to a halt. All businesses closed, educational institutions closed, airlines, trains and all sort of transportation closed, made entire world literally put under a curfew. Just imagine the situation of the world in 21st century where the entire world comes to a halt, and all social, business, educational and industrial activities stopped. But even all these stringent measures could not stop millions of people worldwide getting infected from the deadly virus (120 million to the last count) and over 26 million losing their lives to the deadly virus so far.

The constant long period of lockdowns broke the very backbone of every economy, businesses, and communities world over. The world’s biggest economies, superpowers, and most developed countries, all struggled to survive and to keep its citizens safe. The scientist’s world over worked day and night to develop and find a vaccine to fight the deadly virus and finally a couple of countries, including India succeeded in getting the vaccine. India led the world in not only developing the vaccine early but also displaying a ‘world is a family’ gesture by supplying vaccines to many small and needy countries for free. India has also supplied vaccines to some of the industrially advanced countries and to some hostile nations too.

The continuing, long period shutdowns of businesses and industries took a big, tall on the economies worldwide. Hundreds of thousand small and medium businesses including media houses succumbed to the tough financial situations and were forced to close. In New Zealand also, a few mainstream and ethnic media houses could not survive the lockdown pressures and had to close publication. So, we really consider ourselves very fortunate to have survived this storm, despite of being the newest and the youngest member of the ethnic media family in New Zealand. The acceptance by the wider community about us as a trustworthy media platform, is our biggest achievement of three years. This not only gives us enormous comfort and a sense of pride but also a sense of responsibility to continue going on the path that we have chosen.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our readers, patrons, critics, supporters, and well-wishers who have always inspired us to do better. We also understand that it is not always possible to make everyone happy or be politically correct all the time. The one thing that we have always stood for and will continue working on, is our pledge with the truth and the righteousness. We have come a long way by adopting this path and intend to continue that in future too, however difficult the times may be.

– Yugal Parashar