Remembering girls

BY KALPANA SHARMA| IN Opinion | 29/10/2009

Second Take

Kalpana Sharma

Rarely does a mainstream newspaper deviate from the norm.  When it does, this is something we must note, and appreciate.

Thus the October 17 issues of Lounge, the Saturday edition of Mint (the business paper of the HT Media group) came as a pleasant surprise.  On most Saturdays, Lounge has interesting features but many of them are centered on high-end consumption.  The prices of the articles of desire ranging from lamps for your living room to clothes and watches are beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. The aim of such features, one presumes, is to fuel aspirations.  Lounge makes no excuses for reaching out to an audience that has the wherewithal to indulge. 

But on October 17, Diwali, the issue of Lounge was all about giving, not buying or consuming.  Titled"The Giving Issue", its subtitle was even more unusual"Why the girl child needs your help and how you can change her life."

Thirteen well-written stories on girls who have either managed to pull themselves out of poverty into a life that holds out some hope for the future, or have been encouraged to choose unusual paths by their families, made up the main part of the issue.  Corporate honcho Anand Mahindra wrote some surprisingly perceptive words about the need to empower women and how some men only understand the language of power.  He went on to explain why his family had set up an institution that focused on the girl child.

Even if such an issue moves a small number of the newspaper's readers into considering how to support groups that are focused on the needs of the girl child, an important step will have been taken.  Giving is something that has disappeared from our vocabulary as the media concentrates on promoting consumption indirectly through the advertisements that pay for its existence and directly through some of the writing that celebrates ostentation and consumption in a country with so many who live in abject poverty.

That gender often needs a specific focus goes without saying.  Although much has changed in the language used by newspapers - no more"eves" in headlines, for instance - issues that concern half of India's population, that is women, are either neglected or forgotten.  Sometimes they are addressed in special supplements or features.  But rarely is it accepted that news about what's happening to India's young girls is as"hard news" as a report about how many more nuclear reactors India plans to build.  By linking giving to the issue of the girl child, Lounge has attempted to bring a valid issue to the forefront.

The cynics would say that the attempt by Lounge to encourage giving is typical of the corporate world where some presume that problems like poverty and gender discrimination can be sorted out with a little bit of charity.  On the other hand, we also know that there is very little real charity in a country the size of India and with the number of very rich people it has, people whose wealth outmatches that of many living in far richer countries.  The charity that does exist is usually based on religion or helping a specific community.  There is very little support for non-sectarian and secular organisations that work for basic issues like education, gender and social equity and justice.  There are few foundations that encourage the better off to commit regular amounts that can go towards such secular causes.  Against such a background, such efforts must be appreciated.

What many readers do not appreciate, however, is the way advertising is crowding out reading matter in newspapers these days. On an average, at least three days a week, the front pages of major English language dailies in Mumbai are advertisements.  You start your day not with headline news but with an advertisement asking you to invest in a luxurious apartment.

Even worse are the irritating, one-third strips that appears before the front page.  It makes the task of reading a broadsheet newspaper impossible.  You end up losing the last page, as the little flap on the front cannot be folded over like a normal broadsheet newspaper.

And then there are ads facing ads.  In the run up to Diwali, for instance, India's largest newspaper that inevitably also attracts the most advertisements had six consecutive pages in the middle of the newspaper that were full page advertisements.  You had to work hard to find the news between the ads.  When there is no or little space for news in a newspaper, does it qualify to be termed a newspaper at all? 

In the good old days, when newspapers were dull with a lot of grey matter, and journalists earned a pittance, there was also a golden rule about the ratio of advertising to editorial matter - generally 60/40.  Today, even 80/20, that is 80 per cent advertising and 20 per cent editorial matter, fails to draw a comment.  It pays for the salaries of journalists, we are told.  But it has also made media houses profitable businesses as never before.