Newspapers in India

The print media in India is very impressive, with articles and journalism as good as I’ve seen anywhere in the world. You can find coverage of everything India, from politics to business to cricket and Bollywood. They also often have excellent op-ed sections that give you different points of view on the issues of the day over here. Many of the major papers have different editions for many Indian cities, so I can get my local Coimbatore news in the same paper that gives me my news for Tamil Nadu and India as a whole.

There are literally 1,000’s of daily newspapers in India, due in large part to how many different languages are spoken here. India has 18 official languages, 29 languages spoken by over a million people, and over 100 languages spoken by more than 10,000 people. This creates a demand for newspapers in MANY different languages and as of now there are newspapers in over 100 of them.

I’ve been reading papers every day since I’ve been back- I have found it to be an effective way to keep up with what issues are important right now in India. In particular, it has been interesting to see what shenanigans politicians have been into, and the op-eds offer a pretty balanced view of both sides of the issues.

They also offer very good coverage of international news, so I have been able to keep up to date on the (often depressing) news coming out of the US these days. It is interesting to see their take on such issues as the debt ceiling, the presidential race and Hollywood gossip.

I think the media is especially important in a place like India, where corruption can be such an issue. The fourth estate can keep people accountable here, and I have seen countless articles that investigate and name names of people that are doing the country wrong. For example, look at this article/infographic on corruption that was in today's newspaper. Compare this to a country like China, who doesn’t have press freedoms and therefore makes it much harder for them to keep their officials clean and honest. I think this is one of the best things that India has going for it, while things are far from perfect over here, it is a true democracy and the strong press makes the country as a whole stronger.

If you’d like to check out some headlines from Indian newspapers, here are links to my three favorite English papers, at least in the south. They are The Hindu, which is my fave I think, and then the Times of India, which is also quite good and the Deccan Chronicle, which focuses mainly on South India. It’s worth a click to see what’s happening in India and it might also give you a taste of what Indian English is like- although it’s similar, differences with American and British English will quickly become apparent. Happy reading!