Dear Friends,
New Delhi. 01 January 2021. Every end heralds a new beginning and life goes on. The year just gone by introduced two new words Corona and COVID which changed the world for ever.
2020 also gave the world new professional norms and the global lockdown taught us to work from home, meet on google meet & zoom, say bye to seminars & conferences and get used to webinars for brain storming.
This year -per se- started with a bang when we decided to start a series of video interviews. It was a pleasurable experience to interview veterans and serving officers including the just having taken over Army Chief General MM Naravane for the Army Day in January. And the happiness was multi fold as our viewers liked these immensely. This was followed by an exhaustive coverage of the Bombay Sappers Bicentenary celebration as the exclusive media partner. And this was followed by coverage of Defence Expo which happened at Lucknow this year in February with the zeal and enthusiasm as always. Nothing to beat the spirit of Team ADU when Suresh Somu our Bureau Chief decided to cover the Singapore Airshow in tough corona times, despite all of us telling him to give it a miss.
However, come March and the world faced Pandemic caused by the Covid 19 virus resulting in the worst calamity of the century. What started from China spread all over and created chaos . As on date more than 35 million people are infected with this deadly virus and more than one million have lost their lives. India itself has 6.62 million infected people & more than one lakh have lost their precious lives. WHO issued guidelines so as to prevent its spread by advising people to wear mask , maintain social distancing and better hygiene. This changed the world order over night. Working from home, Webinars ,strict restrictions by the administration to curb its spread closed markets ,industry ,tourism etc. the media was also affected adversely ,which virtually came to a grinding halt.
For ADU the silver lining was that it is digital and therefore its tempo did not slow down , rather it became more vibrant .The readership also increased during this time. For this the credit goes to our Bureau Chiefs in Middle East, Europe and South East Asia. North American region which is USA and Canada , major aviation centres saw a moving of our Bureau Chiefs who started their own work . With movement near minimal due to the global lockdown, the team hopefully will become complete once the recruitment for the region finishes by the end of this month.
The fulcrum was our Editor who worked overtime to ensure that no NEWS worth a mention , is left out or delayed in publishing. ADU also got full support from our team at Viral Web Tech which ensured that news got uploaded without any interruptions and delays.
Our Advisory Board comprises of illustrious members of our Society, mainly from Foreign Service, Administrative Service , top brass of Army, AirForce, Navy & Police .We also have members from the academia and cyber space, which is so relevant in the present scenario. Their contribution has been immense so as to keep us on an even keel. Each of them have been a pillar of strength to us in these tough times of the pandemic.
ADU wishes to show its gratitude to its contributors who wrote relevant articles as and when approached. They are our mainstay and we salute them and solicit their support in future.
Last but not the least , ADU exists because our esteemed advertisers have shown faith in us and continue to support even in difficult times of Covid 19. Many thanks to them.
Wishing you all happy reading & enjoyable journey with ADU in 2021. Lets begin a new journey with hope and joy.
Brig. VK Atray
