Reading this, you enjoy double subsidy

Dailypost India , Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Krishna Kumar

It is a fact universally acknowledged that children imbibe habits from their parents. My father rose every morning and looked for the news paper, the first thing he did each morning. I too have grown into the habit of reading the newspaper first thing each morn.

Over the past few years, I wondered if the Indian news papers will vanish due the ever increasing breaking news TV channels and online news content. It is however heartening that the newspaper Industry in India seems to be thriving.

I really only appreciated the value of Indian newspaper only when I started travelling across the world. Thanks to my work as a software engineer, I have had the opportunity to visit many countries and live in some places abroad.  There are parts of the world wherein finding an English-language newspaper can be hard. Not always I had an English newspaper delivered to my room while living abroad.

When I first started travelling the world, I would think to myself that the cost of just one newspaper in some countries would fetch me my newspaper back home for the whole month! In course of time, however, I dropped the currency-conversion habit and began to buy a paper.

I've found that in the West, many newspapers are heavy on local content. Even so m given that the world is now a 'global village', it is never hard to comprehend the news.

While abroad, I pose questions to my foreign colleagues to get a sense of whether i'm forming impressions that they share. I would ask my colleagues if they knew that India has more daily newspapers than any other country in the world. Twenty of the world's top hundred newspapers are printed in India.

My colleagues tell me that they are not surprised that such a large number of newspapers come out of India;after all it is such a populous country!

I have also sometimes compared the cost of a newspaper to a litre of petrol. In most countries, the cost of the newspaper is almost the same as a litre of petrol, even though there is no direct co-relation between the prices of these two items. Only in India is there such a vast difference.

 Come to think of it, in India, inflation or not, the price of the newspaper has remained stable. There were even a few years when newspapers were available for just one rupee, due to cut-throat competition.

I've wondered how Indian newspapers were priced so low. An editor of a leading newspaper recently mentioned that while printing a newspaper costs at least Rs 12, it is sold at a heavily subsidized price.

As an average Indian, I enjoy something of a 'double subsidy'. I get a subsidised newspaper, and when I sell my stack of raddi, I get nearly 30 percent of what I spent on my already subsidized newspaper right back! The low pricing is possible thanks to advertisements.

Indian newspapers are rich in content are attractively priced. But not so many Indian readers will appreciate that they are truly lucky, to have such attractive newspapers priced so low! Long live the Indian Newspaper!

Krishna Kumar is an IT professional based in Bangalore