From the late 1970s a revolution in Indian-language newspapers, driven by a marriage of capitalism and technology, has carried the experience of print to millions of new readers in small-town and rural India. This volume analyzes the role of capitalism and technology in shaping identity, “national” or otherwise, and seeks to explain the inner workings of one of the most complex newspaper industry in the world. It pinpoints the role of advertising in propelling a multilingual print boom, and throws light on questions of literacy and the standardization of languages. The India of the 1990s is revealed here from perhaps an unfamiliar angle, and in addition the text seeks to illustrate the global transformation of media, of which India is seen to play a key part.
