By now, the Readers’ Report section of The DayAfter had also become very strong and provocative. We had raised in one of the earlier issues the controversy about the usefulness of the institution of chief ministers and corruption at the highest level. The results were some thought-provoking responses in the Readers’ Report. There were three readers who had discussed even the utility of the august office of the President. D. K. Das from Delhi felt that even the institution of the presidency had served no useful purpose till that point. It had only resulted in raising unsavoury controversies by unscrupulous persons to embarrass both the President and the Prime Minister. He felt that the time had come to abolish either the post of President or that of the Prime Minister. Narain Dutt from Ghaziabad had argued that the "President is Not the King of England" and the "wisest thing for him is to stay away from public and political controversy as most presidents have so far done. There should be a law to punish those who try to drag the august offices of the President and the Prime Minister into disgraceful controversies".

Mohan Kumar from Kanpur had risen in defence of the Presidency. Arguing "Why Blame the President", he had said, "It is fruitless to blame the institution of presidency and the office of the prime minister. The main fault is with the present system itself which breeds corruption, dishonesty and dissatisfaction at all levels. The best thing is to change the electoral system and cut down on the bureaucracy considerably". Sneh Sharma from Meerut had argued the case for the abolition of States and regionalism and pointed out: "I am fully in agreement with the view that if we have to save this country from Balkanisation, unprincipled factionalism and the politics of dishonesty and greed, it is better to abolish several offices of both chief ministers and governors. We should have only four regions, North, South, East and West, and have only elected chief executives, directly elected. You can call them the State Prime Ministers or Governors as you like. The Ministers should also be chosen not from the elected representatives of the people but from experts in different areas who know their jobs better than the politicians, some of whom know very little of anything on this earth. At the Centre also, there should be one chief executive and head of the State and not a President and Prime Minister both".

Navjot from Chandigarh had raised the issue of "Corrupt Chief Ministers" and Rajesh Gupta from Kanpur, who seemed to have some kind of a soft corner for the Congress and its politicians, had raised the issue of the "Corrupt Opposition." In a very interesting argument, he had pointed out: "Is it true that when a Congressman defects and joins any opposition party, he ceases to be bad or corrupt? Is it not true that there are several Opposition leaders who are no less corrupt than Congressmen? Why does not the media expose the corrupt in the Opposition parties? Surely corruption is not the exclusive quality of Congressmen alone?"

That was April of 1987. Since then much has happened in the country’s life and nobody can complain that the media spared anyone suspected of being corrupt in politics, Congressman or no Congressman.

Many had already started calling The DayAfter the "Controversies" journal of India. And they had good reason for that. We never shied away from raising the sharpest controversies if they were in public interest. And I promise you, we shall not run away from controversies even today, tomorrow and the day after, if it is necessary in the public interest. That April 1987 issue had a fair share of memorable controversies between its covers. There was an analytical report entitled "Not by Image Alone," analysing the Congress defeats in West Bengal and Kerala, a very controversial cover story on "Do we Need a Public Sector?" with its running-mate report "Does India Have A Private Sector?" And the first part of an interaction with Vasant Sathe on "Public Sector: The God that Failed". At that point, Sathe had gone on record that out of 219 major public sector undertakings in the country, over 150 had a record of inefficiency and failure which could not do any national good. We had pointed out then that, "despite the fact that there are public sector undertakings with an extremely impressive record of profit and growth or both, it is clear as daylight that, by and large, the public sector remains a God that Failed."

We had raised the debate: Can the country afford such colossal failure? Of course, we were not anti-public sector then and are not so even now. What we were against was inefficiency, corruption and callousness of the self-appointed "Government Office Industrialists". If there is vehement criticism of some of the disinvestment adventures today it is because of the same old reasons.

The DayAfter had maintained its distinction as the amazing Indian journal, always ahead of others in newer and newer areas of social, political and economic investigative journalism. On "Civilisation" we had a story from the DA Bureau about "The Cities of Sumer and the Empire of Agade", a civilisation of distinction 3,000 years before Christ. Under "Confront" which raised consumer issues, Sudha Datt had examined what happened "Behind the Super Bazar Walls". We had an investigative story about how a "A Revolution in Power Generation" could be brought about by "Power from the Sea". We took a look at what was happening in the field of "Integrated Education for Disabled Children" in the superb study by Uma Joshi. We carried an interview with Janos Kadar, General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party under the title, "Trust in Future Based on Past Experience". We had provocative investigations into the art scene, religion, the coming of the Concorde to India, the Air France story, organic beauty aids, entry of computers into the field of forestry, positively negative cricket, the Milan Fair, potential and limitations of technology, how sickening are the hospitals, India’s maritime strategy, silly books that girls read, an offshore banking centre in India and compensation to road accident victims. In Good Morning India, there was a salute to Sunil Dutt, the film star with a big heart and courage, who walked all the way from Mumbai to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to restore mutual respect among two great religions. His journey had started from a Hindu temple, a Muslim shrine and a Christian church from Mumbai and concluded at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The 55-day long march was to establish confidence among Hindus, Sikhs and all others and to "seek guidance from the saints whose spirit the great temple symbolised".