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Observation in India
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OBSERVATION IN INDIA
I'm four days into a whirlwind tour, my first ever visit to India, having touched down in Chennai, Mumbai and now Delhi.
I've been a bit reluctant to record my observations so far. I'm delighted to report that The Interpreter clearly has a sizeable and loyal readership among the Indian foreign and strategic policy community, but when you meet such people face to face, you suddenly become acutely aware of how little you know about this country and how condescending they would find it to read the judgments of a man who has spent a bit less than a hundred hours here flitting between offices, conference rooms, hotels and airports.
So just a few stray observations, then, which will inevitably be superficial but hopefully don't stray into cliche:
If you're a media junkie, this is your country
Western observers of the media industry are now thoroughly familiar with the story of long-term decline in their own countries, but that's not happening in India. Of course, there is a massive shift here from print to online, but India boasts some of the world's biggest and most successful newspapers; in fact, the entire industry is booming. I'm told this is especially true among non-English newspapers, which are some of the most profitable. There is a well established newspaper-buying habit even among the poor.
But even if this country is one of the last bastions for 'dead tree' journalism, the journalists and editors I have talked to tell me that there is very much an 'online first' mentality. Rather than Twitter, which is popular among Australian journalists, reporters here prefer to use WhatsApp for breaking news. And whereas Australian journalists will set up their own Twitter accounts to post breaking stories and thereby build a personal brand, Indian journalists use WhatsApp accounts under their employer's name. All their posts are edited before being published.
