SPECIAL ARTICLE
Politics after Vernacularisation:
Hindi Media and Indian Democracy
Taberez Ahmed Neyazi
The resurgence of Hindi newspapers has made it difficult
for English newspapers to continue their dominance
over social, cultural and political spheres in postcolonial
India. It has also widened the political and cultural space
available for the hitherto marginalised groups who could
not participate in the national public sphere dominated
by a certain mode of discourse and the English-speaking
“national” elite. Hindi media has played a vital role in
creating an alternative public discourse which has
definitely changed conditions, if not by displacing the
extant public sphere, then by putting regional issues on
par with national issues.
Taberez Ahmed Neyazi (tneyazi@yahoo.com) is at the Graduate School
of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW march 5, 2011 vol xlvI no 10
W
hen newspaper circulation in other parts of the world
is continuously declining with the coming of television
and new media, it has seen exponential growth in
India. The average daily circulation of newspapers in the United
States has been declining at a rate of about 6% a year (Project for
Excellence in Journalism and Rick Edmonds 2010). Total news-
paper circulation in India has grown from 126.96 million in 2000
to 207.10 million in 2008 (Registrar of Newspapers for India:
various years). This growth in circulation has been spearheaded
by Hindi and regional languages, though the English language
newspapers have also grown.
An overview of the literature on the Indian news media shows
that the English media, which dominated the national media mar-
ket from independence till the late 1990s, is no longer the domi-
nant market player (Jeffrey 1993, 2000; Neyazi 2010; Ninan 2007;
Rajagopal 2001; Stahlberg 2002). The booming Hindi news media
industry is a testimony to the fact that vernacular media pose a
serious challenge to the dominance and authority of English media
in the public sphere. As many as 23 Hindi news channels have been
launched since 2000. According to the latest circulation figures of
2008, Hindi dailies lead with 84.9 million copies while English
dailies stand at distant second with 31.5 million copies.
Furthermore, the reach of the Hindi news media is not only
confined to north India where Hindi is widely used, but has also
penetrated other parts of India. The sheer number of Hindi
speakers – 40.22% of India’s population – demonstrates the sig-
nificance of Hindi as India’s lingua franca.1 How and why have
newspapers in general and Hindi newspapers in particular been
growing in India in an age of television and new media? What are
the implications of such a massive growth of Hindi news media
for Indian democracy? Has it led to the empowerment of the mar-
ginalised sections of the society or has it created fragmentation
in the public sphere? Is there a relationship between the deepen-
ing of Indian democracy and the rise of Hindi media? These are
some of the important questions that are answered in this paper.
Michelutti (2008: 217) in her study of a north Indian city des-
cribes the process of vernacularisation of democratic politics at
the local level, which she defines as “the ways in which values
and practices of democracy become embedded in particular cul-
tural and social practices, and in the process become entrenched
in the consciousness of ordinary people”. Though she occasion-
ally refers to newspapers, she has not explored in detail where
the “ordinary people” get their news. How did the local news-
papers, which are always hungry for news in a highly competitive
media environment, play a role in spreading or stifling the values
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
and practices of democracy? This paper shows the ways in which
local newspapers have provided access to the institutions of
democracy to different sections of society and contributed to the
deepening of Indian democracy.
The research draws its empirical examples largely from the
state of Madhya Pradesh. However, the paper uses macro-level
data from Uttar Pradesh as well as Madhya Pradesh in northern
India and where necessary, compares them with Kerala and
Tamil Nadu in southern India. Madhya Pradesh and Uttar
Pradesh are not only two of the largest but among the most politi-
cally mobilised states in the country. The states of Uttar Pradesh
and Madhya Pradesh have together produced seven prime minis-
ters out of the 13 prime ministers that India has had so far. Not
surprisingly, they are described as the political heartland of India.
The comparison with Kerala and Tamil Nadu is significant as
they were, in the 1960s, the most politically mobilised states in
India and witnessed the mobilisation of lower-caste groups that
resulted in the capturing of the state power led by the lower-caste
political parties. Thus Varshney (2000:3) argues that “[i]f the
Hindu-Muslim cleavage has been a ‘master narrative’ of politics
in North India for much of the twentieth century, caste divisions
have had the same status in Southern India”.
Kerala was the first Indian state to challenge the dominance of
the Congress Party in national politics with the capture of state
power by the Communist Party in 1957, while Tamil Nadu wit-
nessed the rise of the Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK), an
anti-brahmin party in the 1960s. The Communist Party in Kerala
largely drew its support from the Ezhava community, a low-caste
group engaged in the production of indigenous liquor.
What is important to note is that this was the period when
Kerala and Tamil Nadu had higher penetrations of newspapers as
compared to north Indian states (Table 1, p 78). When the pene-
tration of newspapers in north India started to increase in the
1980s and 1990s, a similar mobilisation of lower-caste groups
swept through the region. In order to understand the process of
the deepening of Indian democracy, micro-level data has been
used from my fieldwork in Madhya Pradesh. Before analysing the
role of the Hindi media in the deepening of Indian democracy,
this paper highlights the reasons for their growth.
Localisation and the Growth of Hindi Newspapers
Rapidly growing literacy in the past few decades created an up-
surge in demand for Indian language newspapers. Yet the growth of
literacy alone cannot be the crucial factor – the percentage growth
of newspaper circulations is higher than both the growth of literacy
and the growth of the total population in India. The decade of the
1990s has seen a phenomenal growth of daily newspaper circula-
tion – almost double the growth of literacy. Literates grew by 595
and newspaper circulation by 138%. Daily newspaper circulations
grew more rapidly in this period than at any time in the past.
Localisation helped Indian language newspapers to retain
their advertising revenue in the face of competition from televi-
sion news channels and new media. Until the 1970s, Hindi news-
papers were produced like English newspapers, mostly from
urban centres where most of the English readers lived. It took
more than three decades for Hindi proprietors to go looking for
76
readers in the smaller towns and rural areas. Hindi newspapers
started to localise in the 1980s and were greatly facilitated by
the communication revolution. There is also a simultaneous
improvement in road transport and many villages are now well-
connected to town and cities. Localisation not only provided
appealing, customised news to local societies, but it also helped
Hindi newspapers compete with television, which was eating
away at the advertising revenues of newspapers.2
The process of localisation started by Hindi newspapers in-
volved decentralising production, distribution and consumption.
It was made possible because of the arrival of new technology,
and the information and communication revolution in the mid-
1980s. Rajiv Gandhi, who became prime minister in 1984, looked
favourably towards the development of modern technology and
“promoted indigenous business in semi-conductors, telecommu-
nications, computers, and computer software”.3 However, with
the onset of economic reforms and the rapid globalisation of the
Indian economy in the 1990s, the process of localisation has been
accelerated. Jeffrey (1993, 2000) has illustrated well Eenadu’s
success in localising the newspaper and creating a new base for
local advertising from retailers, small businesses and sometimes
from unexpected sources such as those mourning the death of
prized pets and working farm animals.
The localisation of production involves decentralising news-
paper production units. Earlier, newspapers were produced from
a single centre and then distributed to different places. This was
expensive and time-consuming. However, with the setting up of
multiple production centres, newspapers were printed simulta-
neously from different places. The development of off-set print-
ing technology, computers and the internet has helped owners of
newspapers effectively decentralise their production. The locali-
sation of distribution has multiplied distribution centres and
located them in previously remote areas to ensure that people in
the hinterlands get the newspaper early in the morning.
Localisation of consumption involves taking news to the grass-
roots by including local happenings, such as local crimes, mar-
riages and inauguration ceremonies, obituaries and so on. Thus,
Dainik Jagran and Dainik Bhaskar, the top two Hindi newspapers,
employ large numbers of local stringers, who need not be special-
ists in journalism, to send news from small towns and villages to
be published in pages tailored for particular districts and towns.
Dainik Bhaskar, the second largest read Hindi newspaper, has
29 editions published across 10 states of India. Those 29 editions
have been further subdivided into various sub-editions or satel-
lite editions. One edition usually has a minimum of five and a
maximum of nine sub-editions. Currently, Dainik Bhaskar pub-
lishes more than 200 sub-editions on a daily basis. Each edition,
thus, differs from the other, and there are only about 40% stories
common across all editions while the rest of the content is cus-
tomised to suit the requirement of the local area and the region.
This helps the newspaper to connect not only with the national,
but also to highlight regional aspirations and local sensibilities.
Another important process of localisation in Dainik Bhaskar
was the beginning of “upcountry supplements”, four-page weekly
pullouts that cover lifestyle and local happenings peculiar to
particular corners of the country-side and targeted at youth and
march 5, 2011 vol xlvI no 10 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

women. This unique concept has not yet been tried by any
English language newspapers in India as “upcountry” is usually
considered less desirable for consumer-oriented lifestyles – coun-
try people are thought to have less money to spend. Mukul Gupta,
in charge of upcountry supplements at Dainik Bhaskar, said that
“keeping in view the changing expectations of readers from a
newspaper, we have come out with this idea, and provide them
stuff that would not only inform them, but also entertain them”.4
Keeping in view the more “conservative” lifestyle of the coun-
tryside compared to the city, Dainik Bhaskar is careful and moves
slowly, rather than making any radical changes that might alien-
ate readers. Mukul Gupta said that “we are not going against the
sanskriti (culture), but focusing on urban lifestyles”.5 Dainik
Bhaskar emphasises local specificities, while trying to introduce
new ways to attract readers.
By localising their content and producing regional, district and
local-level editions, Hindi newspapers have been able to create
new constituencies of readership and retain their share in adver-
tising revenues in the face of growing competition from the elec-
tronic media. Through localisation, Hindi newspapers have
brought news closer to the readers and targeted different audi-
ences more effectively than before. This has enabled them to
cash in on local markets and businesses for advertising, while
simultaneously retaining national advertisers.
Hindi Newspapers and Indian Democracy
With the decline of the Congress system after the 1967 general
election (Kothari 1964), there was a parallel rise of a regional
consciousness in which the regional and vernacular press played
an important role.6 The regional press began to align with the
regional political classes to provide support to the regional cause.
The Congress system which operated successfully for more than
one and a half decades because of its ability to co-opt the regional
agenda into its national programmes, failed to accommodate
these growing aspirations, which needed different institutions to
articulate themselves not only regionally, but also in the national
mainstream. It was also the failure of the English press, as the
supposedly national press, to provide adequate representation
for these local voices.
One cannot ignore the power of the vernacular press when look-
ing at their history as they aligned with nationalist forces to fight
against the British during the colonial period. As shown by Freitag
(1989, 1996), during the colonial period, the vernacular realm and
the activities carried out there provided an important shape to the
development of nationalism subsequently. This vernacular realm
became important with the rise of regionalism and regional elites
after the late 1960s, and that paved the way for the Hindi press to
play a new and proactive role along with the English press. But it
was not until the 1980s, when the Ayodhya movement reappeared,
that the resurgence of the Hindi press was recognised in the
national mainstream. The recognition, though it established the
image of the Hindi press as communal and reactionary, also con-
tributed to its massive expansion and laid the groundwork to chal-
lenge perceptions of the English press as the “national” press.
The period after the 1980s has seen greater mobilisation
of Indian masses in north India. Lower-caste groups and rural
Economic & Political Weekly EPW march 5, 2011 vol xlvI no 10
SPECIAL ARTICLE
populations started participating in the political process more
actively than before (Yadav 2000). The second democratic
upsurge, which began in the 1990s, saw the intensification of this
downwards thrust and the participation of groups that “suffered
from one form of social deprivation and backwardness or
another” (Yadav 2000: 121). Hasan (2000: 147) argues that the
democratic politics of the late 1990s is
distinguished by a fundamental transformation: a dramatic upsurge
in political participation in north India. That, of course, is not the
whole story: the upsurge is most marked among the socially under-
privileged in the caste and class hierarchy.
The entry of new social groups into the political arena with the
rise of grass roots movements and popular mobilisation since the
1980s was also noted by Kohli (1990) and Jaffrelot (2003).7
Stahlberg (2002: 3) argues that “politics in India has to a
great extent shifted its focus from New Delhi to the regional cen-
tres during the same period that the vernacular press has grown
in strength”. In a study of Kerala, Jeffrey (2009) argues that
mass mobilisation results in the rise of newspaper circulation. It
is hard to study the democratic upsurge and social mobilisation
since the 1980s without analysing the role of the media, espe-
cially the vernacular media, as a causal factor in mobilising the
grass roots.
The regional language press in the south India had already
played a significant role in creating a regional awareness and
aligning with regional political parties, and this contributed to
the challenge to the dominance of the national political party,
the Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. In the case of Tamil Nadu,
the media has been an integral part of politics and has facilitated
the rise of plebeians. The Justice Party first launched a newspa-
per called Justice in 1916 before formally starting the political
party. Similarly, Dina Thanthi, a leading Tamil daily, has a very
close link with DMK and later with the All India Anna Dravida
Munnettra Kazhagam (AIDMK). The link between cinema and
politics is also quite evident in the case of Tamil Nadu (Dickey
1993, Hardgrave 1973, Pandian 1992). Similarly, Eenadu, the
leading Telugu daily of Andhra Pradesh, also played a prominent
role in supporting the rise of the Telugu Desam Party of N T Rama
Rao in the state election of 1982 (Jeffrey 1993).
This contribution by Hindi newspapers came only in the 1980s
with the rise of many important non-Congress political leaders in
north India. The emergence after 1977 of political figures such as
Charan Singh, Devi Lal, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Kanshi Ram, Lalu
Prasad Yadav, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Mayawati helped the
Hindi media come out of its political slumber and claim an equal,
although not a dominant, share in the public arena. Compared to
English newspapers which have an urban concentration, Hindi
newspapers had a presence in small towns and rural areas, a
presence that grew significantly in the 1980s. They provided a
platform for the emerging political stalwarts of north India to
raise their voice in the public arena.
At that time, nobody realised that the political discourse for
the coming decade was going to be hegemonised by northern
India, nor that would lead to an invigoration of the political and
cultural significance of the Hindi media. This process was a result
of two major political movements that emerged in the north
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Indian “heartland” and changed the overall course of Indian poli-
tics – the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri mosque controversy, which
empowered the Hindutva forces to gain national significance
(Nandy et al 1995, Engineer 1990, Rajagopal 2001, Hasan 1998),
and Mandal politics that allowed marginalised groups, especially
the lower castes, to assert their rights in the public sphere. These
two north Indian movements dominated national politics for
more than a decade. However, the biased role played by Hindi
newspapers in reporting and documenting the Ram Janmabhoomi-
Babri mosque controversy damaged their image. Many studies
show clear linkages between the Hindi press and the production
and sustenance of a communal discourse (Nandy et al 1995, En-
gineer 1991, Rajagopal 2001, Hasan 1998). In its December 1991
Ayodhya Judgment, the Press Council of India also criticised the
Hindi press for “offending the canons of journalistic ethics”
(Press Council of India 1991: 338-39).
Many scholars view the rise of Hindi newspapers as part of the
rise of communal and identity politics in India and hence doubt
their role as vehicles of democratisation (Hasan 1998, Rajagopal
2001). While these developments are controversial, one cannot
ignore the voice provided by the Hindi media to hitherto margin-
alised groups. In order to access the vernacular public sphere, the
national elite needed the help of the vernacular media, which
were becoming more robust and proactive in providing an alter-
native approach to development. I, therefore, would argue that
the space for civic discourse exists in the Hindi newspapers and
publics. Their recent growth, especially since the mid-1990s, has
not been fuelled by major communal events such as the Ayodhya
movement. Rather it is because of the rise in literacy levels,
aggressive marketing strategies, better transportation infrastruc-
ture, the rising political significance of the Hindi publics and an
increasing awareness among the masses about participation in
national elite in the public sphere who depended more on the
English media.
The growing participation of the marginalised groups have
been noted by Yadav (2000:120), who looking at the voters turn-
out at the national level, remarks that
Although overall turnout figures have not increased dramatically, the
social composition of those who vote and take part in political activi-
ties has undergone a major change. There is a participatory upsurge
among the socially underprivileged, whether seen in terms of caste
hierarchy, economic class, gender distinction or the rural-urban divide.
There is thus wide consensus among the scholars about the in-
creasing participation by the hitherto marginalised groups of the
society in the political process. However, there is conspicuous
silence on the role of media in creating such an upsurge, and its
aligning with local forces, thus challenging the dominance of the
existing national political elite.
When lower-caste groups were mobilising in southern India,
both Kerala and Tamil Nadu had the highest penetration of news-
papers; in 1961, Kerala had 40 newspapers while Tamil Nadu had
27 newspapers for every 1,000 population (Table 1). This is in con-
trast to Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh which had five and
four newspapers per 1,000 population respectively. Northern India
began to witness the mobilisation of lower-caste groups from the
1980s. In 1986, newspaper penetration in Madhya Pradesh and
Uttar Pradesh went up to 18 and 17 per 1,000 population. The mo-
bilisation intensified in the decade of the 1990s which Yadav
(2000: 120) termed “the second democratic upsurge”. Not surpris-
ingly, in 1996, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh had 45 and 42
newspapers for every 1,000 population. This suggests a correla-
tion between democratic deepening and newspaper penetration.
Table 1: Dailies Per Thousands (1961-2006)
Year Kerala Madhya Pradesh Tamil Nadu Uttar Pradesh India

the political process. 1961 40 5 27 4 11

The resurgence of Hindi newspapers has made it difficult for 1966 40 5 27 5 14

English newspapers to continue their dominance over the social, 1971 52 8 30 6 17

1976 53 8 28 7 15
cultural and political spheres in postcolonial India. It has also
1981 57 10 31 12 22
widened the political and cultural space available for hitherto
1986 67 18 33 17 28
marginalised groups who could not participate in the national
1991 72 28 30 29 28
public sphere dominated by a certain dominant mode of dis- 1996 92 45 34 42 43
course and the hegemony of the English-speaking “national” 2001 99 76 48 56 56
elite. Hindi media have played a vital role in creating an alterna- 2006 121 95 66 87 99
tive public discourse which has definitely changed the conditions Source: Registrar of Newspapers for India (various years).

in the public sphere, if not by displacing the extant public sphere,
then by putting regional issues on par with national issues.
Besides looking positively to technology, Hindi newspapers
also took advantage of the social transformation going on in
India. The rise of grass roots movements and popular mobilisa-
tion since the 1980s resulted in the entry of new social groups
into the political arena, and these groups needed new ways of
expressing their political aspirations.8 In this development, the
Hindi media helped such social groups by providing not only a
language but also an institution; they contributed in presenting
an alternative discourse of democratic participation that was
more inclusive in nature and gave voice to those who were mar-
ginally present in the mainstream English press. By offering such
an alternative, it has thus challenged the dominance of the
78
One might claim that the circulation of newspapers was rising
because of the increase in literacy rates. The growth of literacy alone
cannot be the determining factor, since the percentage growth of
newspaper circulation is higher than the growth of literacy. At
the same time, there is no direct correspondence between the
percentage of literates and newspaper penetration (Table 2,
p 79). When Kerala had a 55% literate population in 1961, it had 40
dailies per 1,000 populations while Tamil Nadu had just 31 dailies
with a 54% literate population in 1981. In 2001, the number stood
at 56 dailies with 56% literacy for Uttar Pradesh, which is much
higher than both the Kerala and Tamil Nadu figures. Similarly, in
2001, Madhya Pradesh reached 76 dailies per 1,000 population
with just 64% literacy. This highlights the need to look beyond
literacy to understand the newspaper revolution in India.
march 5, 2011 vol xlvI no 10 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

One might rightly ask here whether it was growth in newspa-
pers that resulted in the mass mobilisation or vice versa. I would
argue that newspapers certainly have the power to mobilise the
masses and contribute in the deepening of democracy. This claim
is supported by micro-level empirical data that I collected during
my fieldwork in Bhopal and Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh. I selected
Bhopal as it was capital of Madhya Pradesh and headquarters of
Dainik Bhaskar, the most widely read Hindi newspaper. Itarsi
was selected to understand the ways newspaper penetration has
affected politics and society at the grass roots level.
Table 2: Literacy Rates and Dailies Per Thousand (1951-2001)
Kerala Madhya Pradesh Tamil Nadu
Year Literacy Dailies Per Literacy Dailies Per Literacy Dailies Per
Rates 1,000 Rates 1,000 Rates
Population Population Population
1961 55.08 40 21.41 5 36.39
1971 69.75 52 27.27 8 45.4
1981 78.85 57 38.63 10 54.39
1991 89.81 72 44.67 28 62.66
2001 90.86 99 63.74 76 73.45
Source: Registrar of Newspapers for India (various years).
Localisation and the Deepening of Democracy
Localisation has played a very important role in the growth and
expansion of Hindi newspapers. Ninan (2007) in her recent study
of the growth of newspapers in the Hindi-speaking states of India
has tried to grasp the changing contours of Hindi journalism and
its growing impact on local administration and politics. While
Ninan’s study is an important contribution to understanding the
Hindi language newspaper revolution and the nature of the
transformation in the Hindi heartland, her emphasis is on a com-
parative perspective. As a macro-level study, it fails to grasp intri-
cacies involved in day-to-day news-production and how it affects
local society.
Ninan rushes to the conclusion that the process of localisation
has been overtaken by the process of delocalisation, which she
views as a process aimed at removing corrupt practices that
entered into the field of journalism because of localisation. She
writes that “competition first led to degradation of the editorial
product, and subsequently to its improvement” (Ninan 2007:135)
There is in this a covertly implied linkage between localisation
and corruption. In order to cleanse the system, newspaper man-
agement initiated the process of delocalisation to “restore their
credibility” (Ninan 2007:139). Thus she argues that (2007:139):
basic news ethics was revived, planted stories were eliminated, and
circulation, reporting and advertising functions separated. …They
became watchful of whom they appointed as stringers, and began to
insist on basic reporting ethics being adhered to.
One could easily question the description of Hindi newspaper
revolution provided by Ninan, as it gives an impression that the
process of localisation has already been completed and there is
now a drive towards “delocalisation” to bring back journalistic
ethics. Moreover, localisation is viewed as undesirable because of
its relation to corruption and biased reporting. Such allegations
might hold true, as I also found in my study (Neyazi 2009). But
corruption and biased reporting always existed in the media and
they are not byproducts of localisation. If Ninan was making the
point that before the penetration of Hindi media in a big way,
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
there was lots of corruption in what little local media existed and
that the penetration of large-scale media operations improved
ethics, the point would have been well taken. This contest has
been going on as long as there have been newspapers. Therefore,
instead of asserting that the process of localisation has been
overtaken by delocalisation, I would argue that localisation is an
ongoing project which has not yet been completed. In order to
buttress my argument, I draw examples from my fieldwork in
Madhya Pradesh.
Localisation in Practice
Uttar Pradesh “I am Shilpi Sharma, calling from California. I read the news
Literacy Dailies Per
1,000 Rates 1,000
about Tulsabai in the internet edition of Dainik Bhaskar. I want to
Population help her; please let me know the way”.
27 20.87 4 This call was received after the story by Sunit Saxena, a crime
30 23.99 6 reporter, was published in Dainik Bhaskar on 12 October 2006.
31 32.65 12 The title of the story was “Tulsa will have to abandon her hus-
30 40.71 29 band’s body”: “The wife Tulsa did not have the money to take the
48 56.27 56
dead body of her husband back to Betul for final rituals”.
The story was about a wife whose husband got electrocuted
while going to the field for the day’s work. They were residents of
a village called Chirapatla in Betul district, located around 95
kilometres away from Bhopal. The only nearest and good hospi-
tal available in the region was in Bhopal. With much difficulty
and with a meagre sum of Rs 500 provided by the local police sta-
tion, Tulsabai was able to bring her husband to Bhopal and hospi-
talise him in a local government hospital called Hameedia. How-
ever, her husband Ramchander did not survive and died the next
day, 11 October 2006. The publication of the news story resulted
in an unexpected call from a woman in California who offered
monetary help for Tulsabai to bring the body of her husband back
to her village for final rituals. In Bhopal, after reading the story
published in Dainik Bhaskar, many people gathered at Hameedia
hospital in the morning to help Tulsabai.
On 13 October, a byline story was published which read “From
Bhopal to California, people raised their hands to help”. The story
noted that “People’s consciousness arose after the publication of
the story ‘Tulsa will have to abandon her husband’s body’”. This
story was published as an anchor on the front page with a caption
“Bhaskar Impact”. The story highlighted the concern of the peo-
ple who continuously kept calling the Dainik Bhaskar office to
find out how to help Tulsabai. When the body was handed over to
Tulsabai after the postmortem in the afternoon, she had received
a collection of Rs 30,000. Before leaving for her village, she
expressed her gratitude to the local people and told them that
there was not one Tulsabai, but many who visited the hospital
time to time again and needed financial assistance.
The impact of the story can be judged from the way people
came forward to help Tulsabai. It also resulted in a vigorous
debate about setting up an emergency fund to assist needy
people. Instead of approaching the government, people decided
to set up an alternative way of dealing with these issues, and the
impact of the story was followed on 14 October with one titled
“So that we don’t need to beg from the government”.
This narrative reflects how very important civil society is in
dealing with developmental issues. After the publication of the
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story, it was not the government which came forward to assist
the victim; rather common citizens were mobilised. On 14 Octo-
ber, the local member of legislative assembly (MLA), Uma
Shankar Gupta, published a letter in Dainik Bhaskar stating that
it would be good for the society to come forward to help such
needy persons and that the government would provide some
assistance. The reason for encouraging society to take up such
issues on its own was to avoid the misuse of developmental
organisations by different political parties with vested interests.
It is apparent that the government is willing to provide indirect
support to such organisations, but without direct interference.
This case in Bhopal can be compared to a similar case in Itarsi,
where the government was forced to respond by the local media
and citizens.
The evidence comes from a kasba called Sohagpur,9 located 40
kilometres to the east of Itarsi.10 The area was affected by flood-
ing in the months of August and September 2006. The news of
the flood and the people being affected by it was regularly cov-
ered by Dainik Bhaskar. Abhinay Soni was the stringer for Dainik
Bhaskar who sent news about local happenings. Besides working
as a stringer, he had been a full-time employee at a local English
medium school since 2000. He joined Dainik Bhaskar in April
2005 and since then has been regularly sending news about
Sohagpur and nearby villages. He has set up an internet connection
at home which lets him send news directly to the Bhopal office.
During the floods, he wrote a special report on the dire situa-
tion of the nearby villages and about the people who had escaped
and taken shelter at a government school in Sohagpur, titled
“The Level of Flood Water Receded, Danger Averted”. It appeared
on 3 September 2006. In the story, he mentioned a person named
Dhanraj, who had taken shelter since 14 August in a makeshift
camp in the compound of a government school. The condition of
Dhanraj was deteriorating and he was suffering from fever. The
story appeared on the front page of the four-page pullout for
Itarsi with a photo of Dhanraj. The text asked local administra-
tors to provide immediate help or Dhanraj would lose his life.
After the story was published, the administration geared into
action and Dhanraj was asked to visit the tehsil office, to receive
help. Since Dhanraj was unwell, his wife Anita went to the tehsil
office on 4 September to receive assistance, whether in the form
of money or food. However, when she reached the tehsil office,
she was informed that her husband had passed away. The next
day, Abhinay Soni had another byline on the front page with the
headline “At Last Dhanraj Died”. The story was flashed with a
micro copy of the previous story warning the administration
about Dhanraj’s condition. The latest story highlighted the
administration’s lacklustre attitude, which eventually resulted in
Dhanraj’s death. Moreover, instead of asking Dhanraj to come to
the tehsil office for help, the administration should have sent
someone directly to him. These questions were raised in the story.
The next day, people blocked the main road to protest the admin-
istration’s mishandling of the situation. Later, Dhanraj’s wife and
five-year-old daughter received Rs 20,000 as compensation; his
wife was also given a clerical job in a local government office.
This incident raises many questions about the viability and in-
fluence of newspaper localisation. It is evident that it was because
80
of the publication of the story in the local edition that the admin-
istration came to know about the condition of Dhanraj and tried
to assist him. While the delay in providing help may have resulted
in the death of Dhanraj, it provoked the people to protest against
the administration and apply further pressure to help the de-
ceased’s family. It can thus be argued that without localisation, it
would have been nearly impossible for the issue to get such wide
attention and for Dhanraj’s wife to get justice. News published in
the local pullout goes to the district collector and the local MLA
and Member of Parliament (MP), and is widely read within the
district and nearby towns, and therefore, the administration was
pressured to take action against the incident.
At the same time, the media play an important role in facilitat-
ing political and civic engagement by reporting on people’s expe-
riences and linking them to the experiences of others. This helps
people interpret their own personal experiences as part of larger
societal trends (Semetko 2004). The collective action in both
cases was the result of people’s experience or imagination of sim-
ilar situations. Thus, it would be naïve to undervalue such influ-
ences resulting from the localisation of newspapers. The process
of localisation has created awareness among citizens and ena-
bled them to unite from time to time to protest against injustice.
This clearly reflects the empowerment of marginalised groups,
who until recently remained voiceless.
But before concluding on the localisation of newspaper and
their power to mobilise the masses, I would like to highlight
another empirical example from Sohagpur.
On 2 December 2006, a protest march was taken out against
Abhinay Soni in Sohagpur. It was organised by a local doctor
Gopal Narayan Authay, a dalit. Around 80 to 90 people partici-
pated in the protest against a story published by Abhinay Soni in
the local pullout of Dainik Bhaskar on 23 November 2006. The
headline of the story was “Child Fighting for his Life”. The story
outlined the mishandling of a child’s treatment by Gopal Authay.
Instead of curing the disease, he made the child’s condition criti-
cal. The story accused Gopal Authay of bribing the mother with
Rs 12,000 when she threatened to go to police. However, when
contacted by Abhinay Soni, the doctor denied that he had tried to
bribe the child’s mother and claimed that the accusation was
totally baseless.
The publication of the story infuriated Gopal Authay and he
complained against Abhinay Soni to the Dainik Bhaskar manage-
ment. It must be noted here that Gopal Authay was also running
a non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Madhya Pradesh
Dalit Sangh (MPDS), which was headed by his wife. He managed
to get some people from a rally of dalits going to Delhi on 2 Dec-
ember 2006, and organised a protest march in Sohagpur with
placards reading “Down with Dainik Bhaskar correspondents”,
“Down with the enemies of dalits”. Since none of the existing
local newspapers agreed to provide coverage of the protest march,
he himself sent a photo to the Dainik Bhaskar office in Bhopal.
The incident created apprehensions among the management
in the Bhopal office about the reputation and sales of the news-
paper. Abhinay Soni was asked to visit Bhopal. Interestingly,
when Abhilash Khandekar, then resident editor of Dainik Bhaskar
in Bhopal,11 came to know that I had visited Sohagpur and met
march 5, 2011 vol xlvI no 10 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

Abhinay Soni, he told me that he was trying to cleanse Dainik
Bhaskar of all crooks.
When I asked Abhinay Soni about the whole story, he was un-
happy with the attitude of the management towards him and felt
that he had undergone a kind of “court-martial” at the hands of
responsible people in Bhopal. However, after he provided them
evidence of his innocence, they came out in his support. When
asked if there were any differences between him and Gopal
Authay prior to this incident, he explained:12
Since Gopal Authay had been running a NGO, he wanted publicity for
it. Thus on occasion, he would send me a press note about a social
event organised by his organisation in the area. But I did not get them
published and asked him if his organisations organised an event, why
he didn’t invite me, so I could provide detail coverage. After a few
days, I got an invitation from Gopal Authay and went to attend the
function. To my surprise, the event was organised to discuss why jour-
nalists did not publish news on dalits.
According to Abhinay Soni, the event was organised to humili-
ate him and pressure him to publish press notes about social
events without inquiring if such events ever took place.13
This whole incident brings to light the contested domain of in-
fluence in the public arena between the media and various par-
ties with vested interests. Such contestations have not yet been
resolved, and no amount of democratisation at the local level will
be complete without providing access to marginalised groups to
institutions of democracy, including the media. By creating a
new constituency of readers, localisation has given voice to those
who until recently were unable to effectively raise their concerns
in the public arena and remained at the margin of mainstream
discourse. It has also helped marginalised groups to creatively
mediate with the institutions of democracy that have been cre-
ated at the local level. In this context, Tanabe (2007:589) argues
that “what may be happening in contemporary India is the crea-
tion of a ‘vernacular democracy’ based on people’s creative
mediation of embodied cultural resources and ideas and institu-
tions of democracy”.
Yet, in his recent study, Sainath (2009) has highlighted the dis-
turbing trend of “paid news”, where advertisement and spon-
sored stories are presented as news stories. In a democracy,
where media enjoy unlimited freedom, such a trend can hamper
the democratic deepening and adversely affect the political
choice of the citizen.
Conclusion
In this paper, I showed the need to seriously study the relation-
ship between the role of media and the deepening of Indian
democracy. The expansion of Hindi newspapers and the vernacu-
larisation of the public sphere have significantly influenced poli-
tics and society at the local level. Growing newspaper circulation
in north India has been accompanied by increasing mobilisation
of marginalised groups, a phenomenon witnessed in south India
in the 1960s. The existence of such a linkage warrants the need
to seriously study the massive expansion of Indian media since
the 1990s and its contribution in democratic deepening.
Effective political participation requires informed citizens.
The survival of electoral democracy in India is well-established.
Yet, elections held every five years are but one aspect of democ-
racy. The day to day monitoring of the political process by the
media is crucial to ensuring checks and balances in the political
system and deepening of the process of democratisation. The
media revolution spearheaded by the vernacular media has
brought marginalised groups into the public arena, and posed
serious challenges to the dominance of national political elites,
who now cannot afford to ignore issues emanating from the
regional public arena.
The expansion of Hindi newspapers into the hinterland,
though directly motivated by profit generation, also helped in
creating a space for marginalised groups to raise their griev-
ances in the public arena. As English newspapers have largely
been concentrated in urban areas, and television is mostly na-
tional and regional, the local space, which remained unrepre-
sented, was appropriated by Hindi newspapers. Such an appro-
priation of local space by Hindi newspapers not only supported
their survival in a competitive media environment, but also
earned them the reputation of being closer to the people. Hindi
newspapers, thus, have become important channels to reach
the masses.

Notes
1 Next to Hindi is Bengali which is spoken by 8.3%
of India’s population. For details, see Census of
India (2001). The percentage of the population
that speaks and understands Hindi must be high-
er as the Census of India does not mention the
figure of second language speakers.
2 Since 1991, when satellite channels started com-
ing to India, the share of newspapers in the total
advertising revenue has been sliding, while the
share of television is continuously increasing. The
share of newspapers in total advertisement reve-
nues fell from 73% in 1990 to 46% in 2005, where-
as during the same period, the share of television
in total advertising revenues increased from 23%
to 44%. For details, see Kohli (2006: 20-21).
3 “From 1984 to 1988, the number of computers in-
creased tenfold, the computer industry’s revenues
increased fourfold, and computer software ex-
ports increased fivefold.” This clearly reflects that
high technology was making rapid strides during
this period (Singhal and Rogers 1989: 155).
4 Interview with author, Bhopal, 10 December 2007.
5 Ibid.
6 The one-party domination of Indian politics from
1951 to 1967 by Congress has been termed by Raj-
ni Kothari as the Congress system. Opposition
parties who were sharply divided among them-
selves could not create a viable alternative to the
ruling party and acted instead as pressure groups
outside it. Furthermore, the Congress was quick
to co-opt the programmes of the opposition and
absorb their leadership into its fold, which limited
the growth of opposition parties. For more on the
Congress system, see Kothari (1964).
7 Similarly, Francine Frankel (2000) has described
how India witnessed increasing voter turnout in
the absence of laws for compulsory voting. Such a
trend is in opposition to the experience of the
United States and western Europe where voter
turnout has been declining.
8 Zoya Hasan (2000:152-53), while remarking
about the changing pattern of political participa-
tion in north India, argues that “What is new is
the heightened political awakening among the
lower castes and dalits, a process hastened by the
fragmentation of the old Congress coalition into
constituent groups of upper castes, Muslims and
dalits. What is new is the formation of local and
regional parties that represent marginal groups
hitherto under the Congress Umbrella. The struc-
ture of representation power-sharing conceived
and practised by the Congress was at odds with
the way the new groupings wanted to represent
themselves. The drift has unmistakably been
towards seeking direct control over the state by
hitherto excluded groups”.
9 Kasba is a settlement smaller than a small town
and bigger than a village.
10 Sohagpur is 125 kilometres away from Bhopal,
and has a population of 22,339, while the literacy
rate is nearly 83% (Seshagiri 2008).
11 As of this writing, Khandekar is the state head of
Dainik Bhaskar for Madhya Pradesh. The interac-
tions described here occurred in Bhopal over the
period from September to December 2006.
12 Interviewed in Sohagpur, 23 December 2006.
13 Ibid.
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