Considering its afflictions, it is remarkable that India ’s
press has reached its present high status. It
exists in a country whose leaders declare repeatedly that socialization of the
nation is their goal while at the same time they work doughtily to obtain
foreign investment from capitalist and socialist countries alike. These leaders
try to explain India ’s
ideal of democratic socialism, but on the capitalist side - if such a term can
be considered anything but outmoded - there is skepticism. Although there is a very prominent history of Indian press, yet
the press depends heavily upon government for advertising revenue while large
elements of it succeed in being harshly
critical of that same government.
In recent years the press has gone through two war periods
and two changes in top government leadership. It faces a nation at least 60%
illiterate, with a population growing rapidly - perhaps too rapidly for the
food supply - and living largely in sub-standard conditions. Paper supply
shortages, insufficient earnings to offer salaries competitive with some other
occupations, largely untrained persons being added to the smaller publication
staffs, understaffing, inadequate facilities for production and distribution -
all these handicaps beset the Indian newspapers and periodicals.
As if that were not enough, there is the growing problem of
increasing monopoly of ownership, increasing until recently at least. Add to
that the conflict with government, conflict inevitable in any democratic
society such as India ’s.
If India
could become 85% literate instead of the claimed and possibly over-estimated
40%, her press should benefit. But there are other obstacles that must be
removed simultaneously. Even if such a high degree of literacy were achieved, as no doubt it will in
time, until it is literacy in a common language it will not be of the greatest
advantage to the press or to publishers of books and other materials. For India
has 14 major languages and hundreds of minor languages and dialects. To make
matters more complicated, the official national language, Hindi, is opposed by
Tamil, Bengali, and several smaller groups, such as those that think Hindi
inferior to their own tongue and do not see why it should supersede what they
consider richer languages. Although it is true that several Hindi language dailies, for example Dainik Bhaskar and Hari Bhoomi established themselves as prominent newspapers in India.
English remains, therefore, as a second, unofficial national
language, until the ability to use Hindi is broader than now. About one half
the people of the nation use it. The government expects Hindi news dailies to overcome
English as the native language is more commonly used in official correspondence
and procedures and is encouraged for greater use in every day activities.
The effect of this upon the news agencies and syndicates can
illustrate the problem. One of the three principal news agencies is Hindusthan Samachar, a cooperatively-owned enterprise founded in 1948. Its services must
go out in nine languages, including English. The other two major services -
Press Trust of India and the United News of India – have English transmission only.
Ten others are all small, usually transmitting (or mailing) in English and two
or three other languages. The slowing down of transmission, the demands upon
staff, the mechanical problem of using only two scripts - English and Devanagri
, the increased liability of error or incorrect emphasis through translation
are only some of the results of this Babel .
Newsprint rationing offers a related problem. This headache
proceeds not only from lack of sufficient production within India but also
from lack of foreign exchange with which to import (domestic paper, even when
of suitable type, is twice as expensive as the foreign). Pleas that the Indian press
is vital to the nation’s welfare have obtained no important new currency
concessions, perhaps because none are possible. Nevertheless, the supply of
newsprint from has risen more than 60%, a fact sometimes
overlooked by critics of the government’s policies.
Troublesome as is this lack of paper, to some publishers
more worries are created by a handful of firms that are able to issue large
numbers of publications. As a result of both the social and economic concern
over monopoly, the Press Registrar reports annually in detail on this
phenomenon. Not until 1964 was the trend toward more and more group ownership
arrested. This check was accomplished by the government’s debatable policy of
denying a newsprint quota to new papers to be brought out by a group or ’common
ownership unit’, as the registrar defines it.
Despite this stoppage, the monopolistic situation remained
fixed; it did not retract. In short: common ownership dailies accounted for two
thirds of the total circulation of all of India’s dailies, in 1964, and for 95%
of the circulation of the newspapers in the four leading cities of Bombay,
Calcutta, Delhi, and Madras. Sixty-three such units, (omitting political party owners and publishers of specialized and
technical journals) owned 195 papers. Of these, 146 were dailies, the remainder
mainly weeklies.3 This amount is 38% of the dailies.
Among the chain owners are such firms as the Express
Newspapers with, all told, 23 units, including nine metropolitan dailies and
four editions of a film weekly, Screen; the dailies among them are in four
languages. Bennett Coleman & Co., Ltd., owns seventeen units, covering
seven dailies, including one of India’s best in any language, The Times of
India, and several widely circulated magazines, such as The Illustrated Weekly
of India, and assorted comic, women’s, film, and popular periodicals, some of
them in Hindi.
