Column

If the latest available Indian Readership Survey is to be trusted, of the first ten most eyeball-grabbing dailies, the first three places are claimed by Hindi newspapers (Jagaran, Bhaskar and Hindustan), followed by a fifth (Amar Ujala) and an eighth (Rajasthan Patrika).The remaining five were bagged by the two Malayalam dailies, Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi (ranked fourth and tenth), and one Marathi and one Tamil, Lokmat and Dina Thanthi (sixth and tenth) respectively, while the lonely English broadsheet, on the seventh place, was the Times of India. At the national level, the total readership of all Hindi dailies stood at 13.61 crores while their English sisters had to make do with a measly 3.2 crores.

Conditions apply to the above scenario but the fact remains that the owners of Hindi newspapers, most of them belonging, by a strange coincidence, to the traditional Hindu-Jain trading communities, are laughing all the way to their bank. Time was when a solitary Hindi daily with five metro-editions was a phenomenon commanding awe, envy and copycat admiration from competition. No more. Many Hindi dailies now have more editions than a sow has sucklings. Some of them are making forays into other Indian languages, while the more ambitious among them, like emboldened hyenas, are poaching upon the jaded lioness, English.

All this, one expects, would have given Hindi journalists the Tagorean spiritual body-language of “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,” boosting their professional morale, pride and self-esteem. The days of acrimonious trade unions and contentious pay commissions seem to be over and the post-1990s generation of Hindi journalists is generally earning much more than the preceding ones, thus reconciling itself to contract employment and a tacit “hire-and-fire” policy, though token contrary whimperings can still spasmodically be heard.

Even its detractors are forced to concede that, at least in terms of prosperity, Hindi journalism has arrived. Senior editorial staff, getting undreamt, unheard of salaries, would agree in superstitious deprecation. Yet, attend any sermon or seminar on Hindi journalism, read occasional tell-all magazine articles and wise books on the subject, surf virulent, abusive, dog-fighting blogs on the theme, meet prematurely middle-aged journalists at sleazy press-clubs and you see the Potemkin plaster of profitability gradually peel off and the real,sordidly tragic visage of Hindi journalism stares you in the face and you wonder – are there still some newsmen around who really profess unflinching adherence to public and private truth, who are primarily loyal to their readers and non-readers alike, fiercely unfettered and audacious, who keep an unblinking watch on the individual and collective centres of power and have the courage of their conscience?

Though most Hindi journalists would like to swear by these values, howsoever ante-diluvian, clichéd and mawkish they might sound in this post Radia-tapes-and-paid-news belle époque, many of them end up as unwitting victims to paranoia, schizophrenia, low self-esteem, self-pity and self-blame, bouts of aggressiveness, depression and dipsomania. The aspiring wide-eyed neophyte, mostly from the Hindi hinterlands, enters the profession under the spell of such names as Bharatendu Harishchandra, Madhavrao Sapre, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, Ramvriksh Benipuri, Makhanlal Chaturvedi, Raghuvir Sahay, Rahul Barpute and Rajendra Mathur.

The very first day in the life of this naïve Ivan Denisovich in the Hindi journalistic Gulag terminally purges him of his messianic ideals of national amelioration, leaving him shell-shocked and devastated.

Until around the mid-1980s, journalists, including editors, fanatically believed that journalism was what they determined and practiced. Old-school owners, in most cases, humoured them along. However, in a goal-post changing paradigm shift,a new generation of proprietors decided that enough was enough and made it painfully clear that journalism was a Hindu-Undivided-Family business rather than a mission and the scribes produced a newspaper for the owner-publishers,that the policy of a periodical was essentially the policy of those who controlled the purse-strings.

Gone was the Pro Bono Publico interregnum, the new ideology of Pro Bono Domino prevailed. Corporate journalism came into being, newspapers became products and directors and managers in charge of “branding”, advertising, production, printing and circulation began calling the shots in the name of the owners and summoning the editors to their chambers. Even a chaprasi from the proprietorial or corporate floor became a dreaded presence in the news-hall or the editorial cubicle.

Few Hindi editors have any writing skills – the owners positively discourage any such talent in Hindi – and are too highly paid, though still much less than their English counterparts, to assert themselves in any which way in the running of their “own” newspaper and face the sack. They have, therefore, perfected the pragmatic, skin-saving art of toadying and sucking up to the twin bitch-goddesses of management and ownership. With no professional superiors as protectors, intellectual and moral leaders and role models, the lower editorial drones and coolies are a stupefied, demoralized lot. Surely this iniquitous Apartheid cannot exist in publication houses bringing out only Hindi newspapers? Internet must be fully exploited to create readers’ fora and Ombudsman. Journalists should unite to create blogs to analyse Hindi newspapers daily.