Announcing CRI Subscriptions

Dear reader

The Editors at CRI are very glad to announce the opening of CRI Subscriptions. We are very grateful to some of our friends who over the past months convinced us that this may not be a bad idea after all. You can now support CRI’s efforts by contributing as little as $5 per month.

It would be apt to take this opportunity to express our gratitude towards Shri Gopi Maliwal. Much of what you have seen and will soon see on CRI would not have been possible without the timely material support we received from Shri Gopi. His willingness to support us early on made all the difference.

Before discussing how CRI intends to use the resources generated through your generous contributions we wish to reiterate CRI’s adopted vision and goals. Our swadharma as a media team is to bring well-articulated perspectives to your attention and facilitate discussion of ideas that fascinate all of us. By doing this we hope to promote intelligent political discourse in India and contribute a centre-right perspective to the public sphere.

CRI seeks to provide high-quality, independent analyses of political, social, and cultural issues that concern the Indian public and in doing so, strengthen Indian democracy. The biggest obstacle in the production and curation of attention-worthy analysis is the notable lack of knowledge capital. Also significant is the lack of a healthy ecosystem that encourages the pursuit of good writing and journalism.

Anybody with the slightest degree of familiarity with the state of media affairs in India would readily admit this much. We at CRI intend to address these issues. However, we are not big enough to make a significant difference by the end of next year or the end of next five years. For this reason we intend to take up small projects that, over many years, will cumulatively add up to making an impact on our socio-political discourse.

In the next year we plan on publishing our first book. The subject of the book would be the intellectual history of Hindutva. Our Contributing Editor Aravindan Neelakandan has begun work on this project and intends this book to be a go-to reference material on any discussion of Hindutva and right wing intellectuals in India.

We intend to announce a CRI Academic Fellowship Program that will engage graduate research scholars on topics related to economics and humanities. Through this program we will attempt to curate the knowledge and domain expertise of these scholars into engaging commentary and analysis that will provoke your thoughts and imagination. We believe in planting little dopamine blasts in your brains through scholarly interventions. This is CRI’s way of bringing scholars out of their academic isolation and encouraging them into making meaningful interventions in public discourse.

The CRI Internships for Students of Journalism and Law will be revived. Over the next few months we will seek students of journalism and engage them on projects that will highlight the plight of private education providers, entrepreneurs fighting statism and the like. Our objective is to both highlight the plight of individuals seeking a decent living and to demonstrate that earnest journalism is still possible. We hope these budding students of journalism will then get into the industry and continue to exert a positive influence on the level of journalistic standards in the country.

What we really aim to do in publishing a book on right wing thought in India, in engaging scholars and students is to ensure the churning of ideas is kept up, to facilitate scholarly engagement with the Indian Right and lay the foundations for a slightly better media ecosystem.

The above initiatives are planned to be run on resources raised through subscriptions. As a token of gratitude and in acknowledgement of their contribution all subscribers will receive a subscribers-only edition of our first book on the topic of Hindutva’s intellectual history.

However the Editors’ have chosen not to put up a paywall on this site for now. We believe our cause is best served by ensuring access of our content to the maximum number of readers possible.

In 1955 when William Buckley Jr launched his National Review, the magazine was financed by 120 small investors – all of them his readers. Many of them had invested less than one thousand dollars. Back then William Buckely Jr proved that one could launch and sustain a magazine with direct financial support of his readers. From these humble origins National Review went on to define and defend Conservatism in US for many decades. To this day National Review continues to be funded by the community that has coalesced around the outlet.

(One of the editors wanted to remind the readers that the very same William Buckley Jr also wrote asking a reader to ‘cancel your own goddamn subscription’. The other editors quickly silenced this uncouth dissident)

At CRI we wish to emulate such examples in remaining loyal to our readers. We wish to cultivate and cherish a sense of community between ourselves and our readers. Subscriptions are one more way to entwine our enterprise with the readership. In the words of Edmund Burke: “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”

Between you, dear readers, and CRI we make up a little platoon. Through this first link we intend to do our bit for our country, and to mankind. Please do join us. Buy a subscription.

Yours,

The Editors.

Update: Some readers have reported issues with making payments from India in INR. At the moment we are using two payment gateways neither of which are able to address this issue. We are working to process payments through a third gateway to alleviate this issue. We do apologise for the inconvenience.