Guest Column

A year of alliances ahead
Hormusji Cama, President, INS


The Indian print industry has seen a very challenging 2008. The hike of the newsprint prices to the impact of the economic slowdown are just some of the issues that the industry grappled with in the year. Bombay Samachar's Hormusji Cama, who is also the current President, Indian Newspaper Society (INS), speaks on some of the situations that the industry faced in 2008, and some of the steps that INS would be undertaking in 2009.

A good year 2008, but with a few challenges too many

If I had to sit back and rate what kind of a year 2008 was, I would say that even though it was a good year, it posed many challenges to the Indian print industry. On the regulations side, the only good news worth talking about was getting more FDI for niche magazines. In the current scenario, that helps.

However, if I had to go beyond that, there are many things that we have, in a sense, suffered, and we are taking steps to address them. Top of the list has to be the wage board issue. We are the only industry that has a statutory wage board. Even though the Labour Commission has said that this does not make sense anymore, the government is still persisting on thrusting it down our throats. In the present economic backdrop just about everyone's bottom lines are declining, but we are still forced to give 30 per cent ad hoc increase to all the employees.

Another issue we faced in the year was in context of the freedom of newspapers. Just right now, we are fighting a situation where one of our members in Mangalore was thrown to jail on frivolous charges. Any publication that has written its views freely on politics or the government has been badly targeted - their press is violated, vendors threatened and in general it points towards the intolerance of the government towards the press. We even wrote to the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister and to L K Advani for one of the cases, but the only response we got was Advani's PA saying that the letter would be sent to the concerned people.

The government is using the Press Council of India as a tool to get us to tow their line, and we are not going to allow that.

The 2009 plan

To continue with efforts that ensure the freedom of the press, irrespective of how many attempts are made to throttle it. As far as the press freedom is concerned, the government seems to target the smaller guys. And if you had to see the meltdown situation, chances are that the smaller guys would brave it better than the bigger guys since a lot of their expenditures are lower.

India is a very important market. Unlike most other markets, the literacy rate is still growing here, and that means there are more readers that are added every year. However, the overall situation in India has made us dependant on advertising revenues intensely. Even if you had to see our neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, their cover prices are far higher. Hence, there is a very healthy proportion of subscription and advertising revenue. The dependency on ad revenues in India has been a dampener on our growth. The year 2009 would be even tougher on the industry. We have seen quite a bit in 2008 -- many organisations shelved projects, cut down on expansion plans. 2009 would be worst. The real impact of this lack of funds in the market would be felt in 2009.

We would do what you see birds doing when it rains. They close their wings and huddle together till the dark clouds pass. I see the industry coming together much more than it has ever before. I see many alliances being formed in 2009. Larger papers would also get together and take steps that would mutually benefit many stakeholders. Mergers and acquisitions are also likely.

Another thing that the INS is very excited about is the WAN conference in Hyderabad on March. As the host country, there is a lot that we need to take care of right from logistics and airport transfers to motivating Indian delegates to participate in it. It is a big show, we expect at least a 1000 people from all over the world, and we are really looking forward to begin 2009 with this global initiative.