INDIAN LANGUAGES NEWSPAPERS: 1 Malayalam: 'The Day-to-Day Social Life of the People...' Robin Jeffrey Spreading across India after the end of the 'emergency' in 1977, technological change in the form of the personal computer and offset press revolutionised the newspaper industry. The circulation of daily newspapers in all languages trebled between 1976 and 1992 -from 9.3 million to 28.1 million and the dailies-per-thousand people ratio doubted -from 15 daily newspapers per 1,000 people to 32 per 1,000, Regular reading of something called 'news' both indicates and causes change. Expansion of competing newspapers clearly signals the vitality and growth of capitalism: newspapers have owners and owners must have advertisers. The changes of the past 20 years are obvious yet largely unstudied. The essays in this series on the press in the major Indian languages are part of a larger project to map, analyse and try to understand the transformation of the Indian- language newspaper industry. It would be foolhardy to argue that Malayalam newspapers, because they have long led India on most statistical measures, provide models of the future for other parts of the country. However, the Malayalam experience does illustrate the force of capitalist practices and international technology and the necessity of adapting these forces constantly and skilfully to local conditions.
