Headlines from the Heartland: Reinventing the Hindi Public Sphere

Headlines From the Heartland: Reinventing the Hindi Public Sphere is written by journalist Sevanti Ninan as an in-depth study of the ongoing newspaper revolution in the Hindi-speaking states of India. With improved literacy levels, communications, and purchasing power, the circulation of Hindi newspapers has grown rapidly in small towns and rural areas. The author states, "The main thesis is that localised Hindi newspapers are creating a different kind of public sphere at the mofussil [outlying districts] and taluka [an administrative and geographical block consisting of an average of 80-100 contiguous villages] level in the states of the Hindi belt." These changes have both positive and negative aspects. By focusing their content to serve a local readership, some multi-edition Hindi newspapers have risen to the top of the national readership charts. Against the backdrop of the relationship between press and society, author Sevanti Ninan describes the emergence of a local public sphere; reinvention of the public sphere by the new non-elite readership; the effect on politics, administration, and social activism; the consequences of making newspapers reader-led rather than editor-led; the democratisation of the Hindi press with the advent of village-level citizen journalists; and the impact of caste and communalism on the Hindi press.