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Young Mumbaikars have started theirown magazine to raise questions and voice their opinions on issues like 26/11, price rise and errors in our political system. Shreyashi DasGupta reports.

Itʼs not often that a student magazine gets noticed. But Spectrum has. Unlike what one would expect from a bunch of schoolchildren, this magazine is a political fortnightly thatʼs asking tough questions. And sure enough itʼs impressive.

The team behind the three-issue-old magazine includes students Jeh Tirodkar, Angad Kapur, Harsh Shah, Akhil Mittal, Mazhar Kadwalwala, Zahra Vakil, Amisha Shahra and Rishad Abraham, all students of Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai.

Jeh Tirodkar, editor-in-chief for Spectrum says, “During the terror attacks, when people were angry and agitated, we decided to channelise our anger in a positive manner and launched Spectrum. The main focus of Spectrum is to create political awareness amongst the youth. They need to know more about our political system.”

Jeh adds, “Look at the appalling voter turnout in Mumbai. I wonder if the tragic incident we faced a few months ago had any impact on us as citizens of Mumbai. Wasnʼt 26/11 a big enough incident to bring about a change in attitude? ”The Spectrum team believes, “Itʼs time we wake up and be the change.” AngadKapur,senior editor for Spectrum says, “Jeh and I went for the Harvard Model United Nations conference in Boston, USA. The idea of launching Spectrum came from that experience. Thatʼs where we realised that as students we canʼt vote but we sure enough can take an initiative to inform students of our age about the political spectrum of India.”

Angad adds, “After thesuccess of the first issue of Spectrum the older generation too was interested to know about our take on politics.”

The team constantly reads, conducts debates and keeps track of all leading newspapers, magazines and news channels to understand and analyse how our political system works and what our leaders are doing.

Harsh Shah, head of production for Spectrum says, “We divide our time between school, studies and Spectrum.We put in dedicated hours to do our research on certain issues and then write our articles.”

Spectrum has a wide range of interviews of well known political personalities,comments on key issues and recent happenings. Angad says, “Our main learning experience during our interactions with key personalities that run the state was that itʼs very easy for any body to criticise the government and its procedures, but one has to be in the system to create the change.”

Are we ready to do that? Angad quotes Ghulam Vahanvati who rightly said, “India has a huge population and one canʼt blame the government. One has to stand on their own and make the change.”

Coming back to Spectrum Jeh says, “The response has been amazing. Our teachers were really happy to see our work and our classmates and friends were interested to know more about political happenings.”

The team devotes few hours everyday and manages communications, distribution, production and finance on their own. Spectrum also allows any school student to contribute articles and send in view points. Jeh says, “As children we canʼt vote, but with Spectrum we want to voice our opinion and be the change.”

You can reach out to the Spectrum team at www.youthspectrum.com or e-mail jeh.spectrum@gmail.com or angad.spectrum@gmail.com