23 is not a multiple of 5, like 20, 25, 50 and, so on. It is not even a composite number with nothing other than 1 and 23 itself being its factors. It’s a prime number but not a glorified milestone for a journey down the years. Therefore, while drawing up plans for the 23rd Anniversary Issue of Outlook Money, the editorial squad had to think of something unusual.
The last few decades have been one of the most eventful phases in the history of human civilisation. Not just a host of geo-political developments have reshaped the planet, hundreds of human inventions and innovations have restructured our lives. Countless crises have altered our equations with the world we live in and several natural calamities and disasters have tested our resilience time and again. We mended our ways to deal with the nature, we reworked our strategy to face the challenges head on, and we devised techniques to triumph.
The latest catalyst of change has been the pandemic that has snuffed out 44.4 lakh lives worldwide since last year and shaped up as perhaps the deadliest threat in the history of mankind. When the contagion slammed the brakes on our normal life, we redesigned normalcy, and turned around.
The history of human civilisation is that of our supreme ability to ideate a solution every time we encountered a challenge. These ideas have transformed our lives and made it better. We listed some of those concepts that stormed into our lives as harbingers of change to economies and finances as we perceived them.
We short-listed 23 revolutionary concepts that were introduced in the last 23 years. We sought to analyse how those concepts have redefined personal finance for each one of us. And, we tried to see how they would develop in sync with the evolving dynamics of economy and finance.
The following pages will take you through the ‘23 Concepts that Redefined Personal Finance in 23 Years’ and tell you how favourable economic policies and innovation in technology will make them more and more robust for the nation as well as for every individual.
The unusual idea of putting together an odd number of pathbreaking human innovations was a brainchild of our black-and-white army of scribes, comprising Kumar Chatterjee, Indrishka Bose, Titlee Sen, Subhalakshmi Dey, Harsh Kumar, Yagnesh Kansara, Vishav, Manik Kumar Malakar and Madhuparna Roy Sukul. And, the team that brought the black-and-white thoughts onto the page, comprised Deepak Sharma, Praveen Kumar. G and Vinay Dominic.
As the 23rd Anniversary Issue of Outlook Money gets decked up as your intellectual fodder for managing finances, the entire group stands grateful to every columnist and editorial contributor who has been writing for us. Without their undaunted support, we couldn’t have made it to this position.
While our curious frowns, brainstorms, debates, discussions, phone calls, screams and pleas converged, we stumbled upon Linda Goodman of our good-old youth. “The number 23 bestows, not only a promise of success in personal and career endeavours, it guarantees help from superiors and protection from those in high places,” she writes.
That’s what Outlook Money stands for.
Happy reading!