India: rise of Hindi as a business language

[Harold Schiffman]

The rise of Bharat

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

T N Ninan / New Delhi February 16, 2008

Business Standard has launched itself today as a Hindi business
newspaper — in addition to the 33-year-old English one. We have
started with the New Delhi and Mumbai editions; other editions will
roll out in the coming days. And we know that we will have company.
Rival Hindi business newspapers too will enter the market in the
coming weeks and months — because every market in emerging India is
going to be competitive. Also, publishers recognise that, even as
"Bharat" is coming into its own, economic news has to go beyond just
"India". As the Prime Minister said on Thursday evening when he was
informed that our Hindi paper was about to be launched, "Indian
national languages must get their recognition which is due to them …
too often the dialogue on policy matters is limited to the
middle-class English speaking population, and that's not good if we
are to remain a functioning democracy…"

The opening up of the serious market for business information follows
the rapid growth and geographical spread of the broader Hindi language
press. This has been driven by multiple forces — the growing
importance of small-town India, the spread of literacy in the
Hindi-speaking belt, the growth of business and consequently rising
income levels, and the fact that awareness levels have grown even as
newspapers have become extremely affordable. Readership studies and
circulation audits tell us that the biggest newspapers in the country
are now from the broad belt that sweeps across the heartland, from
west to east, from Rajasthan all the way to West Bengal's Kolkata.
Even in the Delhi metropolitan market, Hindi newspapers sell almost as
many copies as the English language press. These changes are more
evident in Lucknow and Jaipur, Bhopal and Patna than in Delhi, where
politicians pay more heed to the big English titles. But ask any chief
minister which newspapers matter the most and the answer will
invariably be an Indian language title.

Against that backdrop, the birth of a serious business newspaper in
Hindi is a natural development. Our market research has revealed a
hunger for news on the stock market, on companies and brands, on
technological developments and consumer finance, on prices and
interest rates. The survey findings reflect a more upbeat mood than
many people might have assumed, a desire to grab opportunities, and a
strong wish to be better informed on economic issues. At the same
time, the business demographics of contemporary India tells us that
there is a ground-level reality of small and medium enterprises and
trading activity that is waiting to be covered as exhaustively as the
companies that make up the Bombay stock exchange's Sensex.

It is now getting on to nearly six decades since the first
English-language business newspaper was born. It took about three
decades after that for the first of these business newspapers to
register paid circulation of a hundred thousand copies. In contrast,
it goes almost without saying that the Hindi business newspapers will
start off more confidently, with large circulation numbers from the
very beginning. There will not be advertising to match, at least
initially, but that may change because the marketing world too has
woken up to the importance of the heartland. For all one knows, Hindi
business readership might overtake English readership in the coming
years, just as it has done when it comes to the general newspapers.

All of this must inevitably make a difference to the country's debate
on economic policy, to the levels of awareness and involvement that
come with being better informed. That in turn might change mindsets,
and close the many gaps that exist today between India and
Bharat—which would be a service to both.

http://www.business-standard.com/common/news_article.php?leftnm=10&bKeyFlag=BO&autono=313941


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