1. The 'Feelgood": Lifted by a potent but narrow economic boom, India's elite press is slowly leaving the rest of the nation behind.
- Author
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Deb, Siddhartha
- Subjects
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PRESS , *ELITE (Social sciences) , *NEWSPAPERS , *JOURNALISM - Abstract
This article offers a look at the state of the elite press in India. Most English-language dailies in Indian cities include a separate city section that seems reserved exclusively for pin-ups. In the December 6, 2004 edition of The Times of India, for example, the city section of the paper known as Delhi Times had seven large pictures on the front page alone. The women in these pictures were not naked, strictly speaking, but the parade of models and starlets was unending. The Hindustan Times, the other market leader among Delhi's English-language papers with a national circulation just over one million, was the same, and its was no different in other cities. The pin-up phenomenon is only one aspect of the makeover of India's English-language press. None of the publications mentioned above are tabloids; most of them have long histories as serious newspapers, conservative in political sensibility and taste, while the language they work in restricts their audience to the upper and middle classes living in urban centers. The number of English-speakers in India is probably no more than 4 percent or 5 percent of the billion-plus population, but they are at the top of the heap, an affluent enclave of largely upper-caste Hindus.
- Published
- 2005