Indian Media’s Dickensian Age

What has allowed the Indian print media to grow, while newspapers are declining in the west? The first is literacy. Back in 1981, shortly after India’s magazine market got new life, only 40 percent of Indians could read and write. Today, the population is 50 percent larger, and 75 percent of it is literate. So the number of people who can read a - 5 - © Copyright 2011 T. N. Ninan and the Center for the Advanced Study of India newspaper has nearly tripled. Not every literate person has the money with which to buy a newspaper. But average incomes have more than quadrupled, and more people have the money. There is still some way to go on both population growth and rising incomes, so for the next couple of decades Indian newspapers could continue to enjoy a growing market.