June 27, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 15, 1423

NEW DELHI: Twenty years ago, most Indian newspapers were black and white — and read all over.

But with television giving the print media a run for their money, Indian newspapers now spice up their pages with colour pictures and gossip columns on the rich and famous.

Dry political news and religious riots in Gujarat jostle for space with skimpily-clad models, celebrity cross-dressers and cocaine-and-ecstacy raves.

The government on Tuesday scrapped a half-century ban on foreign investment in India’s print media, prompting analysts to say they expect papers to be filled with more glitz and glamour than ever before.

“Newspapers have more colour sections and smaller, more bite-sized items that are more people-oriented,” national columnist Dilip Cherian said. “It’s partially a response to the rise of cable TV and the more populist culture in the country.

“Once the foreign media comes in, Indian customers will decide what they want. And if they’re tired of politics then they’ll have more Madonna.”

India overrode opposition from many powerful media barons on to allow foreigners to take up to 26 per cent stakes in news and current affairs publications.

Already, the pages of the some of the country’s leading English dailies such as the Hindustan Times, Indian Express and the Times of India are filled with what is called “page three” journalism.

PAGE THREE JOURNALISM: Unlike Britain, “page three” in India isn’t about topless girls but concerns itself with the doings of the chattering classes at “haute and happening” parties and the peccadilloes of the fashion fraternity and film stars.

Pick up a newspaper and Liz Hurley’s baby gets as much column space as the baby of Priyanka Gandhi, scion of India’s venerable political dynasty, with headlines such as “Baby’s day out”, while pictures of Kylie Minogue in a bikini sit cheek-by-jowl with a miniskirt-clad former beauty queen Sushmita Sen.

Twenty years ago hardcore political pieces by the editor of the Times of India were the country’s most widely read columns. Today, it is society columnists who rule the roost.

“I don’t care for boring old politicians. I’d rather read Shobha De,” said Delhi housewife Sonam Sehgal, referring to one of India’s most popular and glamorous columnists.

There are some 40,000 newspapers and periodicals published in India, of which 40 percent are in Hindi, and some 15 per cent are in English that reach about five percent of a population of more than one billion.—Reuters