Throughout the 1980s, when I was starting out in the magazine business, we had to contend with articles about the magazine boom in India. In retrospect, it is easy to see why the phenomenon attracted so much attention. In those days, Indian newspapers were godawful: they looked terrible, they were poorly written and they contained very little news.

   The magazines, on the other hand, were full of a younger energy, looked good and read well. Many also broke new ground in terms of the news they covered.

   But then, in the early 1990s, a new kind of article began to appear: Is the magazine boom dead?

   The broad answer appeared to be: yes. The magazine boom was a creation of its time and many magazines that had been started to fulfill the needs of advertisers and readers in the 1980s had less and less relevance in the 1990s.

   I’ll give you the example of Bombay, which I edited when it was launched in 1979. The magazine was a success and continued to do well long after I left. But it was a response to a specific need: the absence of local content in newspapers and the unavailability of colour media targeted at Bombayites for advertisers. Once the newspapers got their acts together and started printing in colour, it was only a matter of time before Bombay folded up, as it did eventually.

   But having said that, I question whether the magazine boom ever really ended. When Business India began stumbling (in the face of competition from Business Today and Business World) the sceptics said with new, improved business papers nobody needed business magazines.

   Well, guess what? All three of the old business magazines continue to flourish. Outlook Business has been successfully launched. Forbes India does well and Fortune is said to be on its way.

   The same goes for people magazines. Everyone warned that Nari Hira’s Society could not last into the new century. But not only does it flourish, there are also many new entrants in that space: Hello, OK, Hi Blitz, People etc.

   And what of Femina, the magazine of our parents’ childhood? It has been successfully relaunched and survives in an extremely crowded women’s magazine market. Verve, Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and God alone knows what else.

   Even the newsmagazines survive. We kept being told that no newsmagazine could survive into the new century. Even Time and Newsweek were struggling, they said.

   Well, yes and no. Newsweek continues to fight for survival (the new strategy of cutting circulation is aimed at achieving financial viability) and you don’t see US News and World Report any longer.

   But Time makes money. And The Economist is one of the great success stories of the last decade, adding new readers in new countries year after year.

   You could argue, in the case of Time (though I am not sure I would agree) that it survived only by dumbing down (in the US). But that explanation hardly applies to The Economist which is what it has always been.

   In India, the three top newsmagazines flourish. India Today retains its hold on Middle India, Outlook has an astonishing influence among the chattering classes, and The Week succeeds because of its loyal base of readers in the South.

   So, here’s my question: were we too quick to write the obituary of the magazine sector?

   My view is that we were. Yes, some magazines were not built to last. But many others could have survived if proprietors had demonstrated imagination and courage. If Filmfare and Femina survive, why did The Illustrated Weekly need to die? It could well have found a new life as a Vanity Fair kind of publication?

   In many cases, newspaper managements simply failed to understand how magazines would need to be marketed in this day and age and closed down many of their magazines. But wherever there was a pure magazine publisher, the boom never ended. Aroon Purie defied the sceptics and the Living Media empire kept growing. The dramatic growth of the Outlook stable demonstrates that the market for new magazines exists: you just have to know how to address it.

   So, the next time somebody tells you something like ‘newspapers are dead’ or ‘news channels are finished’, treat that pronouncement with a degree of scepticism.

   They said that about magazines. And they were wrong.