Between the Broadsheets

One of the striking consequences of this has been the changed pattern of newspaper circulation and, at one remove, readership. The time when the collective circulation of English and Hindi newspapers, respectively, were roughly equal has long passed. No longer do Bengali, Malayalam or Tamil papers head the list of bestselling dailies. That honour now belongs to major Hindi newspaper chains. Circulation and readership figures are but a small part of Ninan’s comprehensive portraiture of Hindi print media’s big leap forward, which she has astutely woven into the wider social, political and economic trends in changing India. To turn even a few pages would be enough to show how painstaking and thorough her research has been. Her writing style is lucid throughout.

Rising literacy rates, increasing farm incomes, the entry of the market into the countryside, and the role of the usually brash second and third generations of newspaper owning families have all contributed to the exponential growth of both the circulation and influence of the Hindi print media. Contrary to general belief, television has helped, rather than hindered the growth, by “fuelling a curiosity that made the viewer turn to the next day’s newspaper”. “Localisation” is what the author calls the spread of the financially powerful multi-edition Hindi newspapers right down to district headquarters. If this has brought about socio-political change in rural areas, the political change, “predicated on caste, class and communal (for which read religious), strategies, has also impacted Hindi journalism”. This should explain the book’s sub-title, “Reinventing the Hindi Public Sphere”.

Progress has not been without pain. Some still remember the infamous halla bol (attack) by Mulyam Singh Yadav on newspapers, especially the Dainik Jagran. A team of the Editors’ Guild, headed by Ajit Bhattacharjea, that investigated the episode was acutely embarrassed over the discovery of how the dispute had started and how it was “settled amicably”. The then editor of the paper became a BJP member of the Rajya Sabha. After he passed away, his younger brother and the current editor is a member of the same House, but on behalf of the Samajwadi Party. No harm in that, as long as newspapers are transparent about their political loyalties and do nothing to give a partisan slant to news coverage.

There are, however, several “negative consequences” of the otherwise impressive process. For instance, on the district pages of the Dainik Bhaskar “could be found not just small paid advertisements but also sponsored reporting that a pragmatic publisher (has introduced) into grassroots politics in the state. These were advertorials called Impact Features, introduced by India Today and used by politicians such as Chief Ministers Narendra Modi of Gujarat and Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra”. If this is not chequebook journalism in reverse, what else is it?

Robin Jeffery, also an expert of the Indian media, has accurately underscored that Ninan “mourns three things: the collapse of small, ‘printing shop’ newspapers, obliterated by capitalist rivals; the demise of independent, ‘intellectual’ editors, replaced by marketing managers and pushy members of the owners’ families; and the loss of wider regional identities as burgeoning newspapers become obsessed with village well news. Yet rural people are drawn into political participation and world awareness unknown to their parents”.

There is a lot more in this book that needs to be noted and commended. But let the reader excavate the treasure-trove on his or her own. All one can add is that this book should be compulsory reading for all those interested in the Indian media or the Indian political process — or both.