In the second most-populous nation state on the planet, the world of newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and the like – in short, the print media – epitomises the size and diversity of the country's billion-plus population. India's press reflects not just the plurality and heterogeneity of the country, but also the deep divisions that exist in its highly hierarchical society. On the one hand, without its many active presses India could hardly be described as a democracy at all. On the other hand, the country's print media portray some of the most crass, crude and commercial aspects of capitalist consumerism.
There are currently close to 60,000 publications of various kinds registered with the Registrar of Newspapers of India (RNI), which functions under the government's Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. Currently, 1900-odd daily newspapers are published in the country – 42 percent in Hindi, 8 percent in English and the rest, a full half, in dozens of other languages and dialects. The total annual advertising revenue earned by all newspapers in India totals around USD one billion. Until the early 1990s, the RNI's main tasks were to register names of publications, and to allocate then-scarce imported paper at subsidised rates. With imports of newsprint being subsequently deregulated, the RNI's role has diminished considerably over the past decade.
The Indian press includes a mind-boggling variety of publications, ranging from neighbourhood free-sheets, to school magazines, to massively read newspapers like the Times of India (TOI), which claims to be the world's most widely circulated English-language daily. But while all of the TOI's editions currently sell more than 1.2 million copies every day, there are at least ten other Indian dailies – none of them in English – that individually sell more daily copies than TOI. Such newspapers include the two largest Hindi dailies, Dainik Jagaran and Dainik Bhaskar, as well as the Malayala Manorama, the Thanthi, the Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP) and the Eenadu. Not only do many of these newspapers print multiple editions from different locations, at least one, the Manorama, also prints outside of India, in West Asia. ABP, meanwhile, is not only the most widely circulated Bangla-language newspaper, but also has the distinction of being India's most widely read single-edition publication.
No city in the world publishes as many newspapers as does Delhi, with more than a dozen English dailies alone. Delhi's two largest English dailies, TOI and the Hindustan Times, account for roughly three-fourths of the total circulation of all English newspapers printed in the city. Why then do so many other newspapers exist in the capital, when quite a few evidently lose money? This may have something to do not just with individual or organisational egos, but also with the fact that many newspaper organisations are sitting on expensive land that was given to them decades ago by the government on long leases. In comparison to the revenue earned from printing publications, many of these newspapers make a significant return by simply renting out their premises.