India, Media Use in

As the second most populous country in the world, India provides an immense market for media of all kinds. Between the traditional news media—newspapers and radio—and the more modern outlets such as television and the Internet, hundreds of millions of Indians are reached, informed, and entertained on a daily basis. [Page 399]Moreover, thanks to the emergence of an economically prosperous Indian middle class (believed to number over 100 million people), the adjacent industry of advertising is growing, at the beginning of the 21st century, by leaps and bounds, further stimulating the development of diverse, financially stable Indian media.

With 55,000 newspapers published in two dozen languages, the most prolific movie industry in the world, and a rate of investment in TV advertising roughly twice that of the global average, India has rapidly become not only a huge media market but also one of the world's preeminent media producers and operators. An increasingly large, young demographic group has developed a ravenous appetite for entertainment-oriented media content, prompting increased attention from both media makers and media watchers. The increased penetration of the Indian market by various media is predictably attracting more and more scholarly investigation, as well as more discussion in the public sphere, of the potential benefits and disadvantages presented by such phenomena as television, the Internet, and cinema to the Indian public in general and to children in particular.

The History of Indian Media

Like most aspects of modern Indian life, the beginning of the national media was heavily influenced by the British Empire's political and economic control over South Asia. As early as the 16th century, European Christian missionaries brought printing presses to India. Until 1780, however, no newspapers were published in a region of the world that was increasingly coming under the economic (and hence political) control of the British East India Company. The first Indian publication was a weekly journal, edited by an Englishman, that contained accounts of the British Empire's faraway battles, news about European affairs, and political attacks against selected English notables in the Indian colony.

Bombay residents walk past billboards featuring a 1996 box office hit, Raja Hindustani. The movie follows a melodramatic plot familiar to all consumers of Bollywood productions: Two young individuals (in this movie, played by prominent actors Aamir Khan and Karisma Kapoor) fall in love with each other and decide to get married against parental wishes. Partly due to the formidable success of such time-honored plot recipes, the Indian film industry is able to claim the largest output of movies in the world.

© Catherine Karnow/CORBIS; used with permission.

In 1819, the city of Calcutta saw the emergence of India's first daily newspaper, and two years later the man who would later be called “the father of the Indian press,” Rammohun Roy, launched three journals written in English, Persian, and Bengali, advocating for social reform in India, which they said was urgently needed. It was the beginning of a national press that saw itself as responsible for the education and emancipation of the Indian people. These concerns were shared by the media, which intensely reported on and debated the 1947 proclamation of independence from the British Empire and the subsequent partition of the region between India and Pakistan.

...