Once again, a lonely furrow

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

Even the non-pink English-language dailies have gone to town over the twists and turns in the saga of privatising the Delhi and Mumbai airports, as well as the decision of the Cabinet to open up the single-brand retail sector to FDI. Yet, if you look at the non-English language papers, you'd think these two events hadn't even happened. This is not the first time the definition of what constitutes news is dramatically different in the English language and non-English language newspapers.

Indeed, even though one of the airports to be privatised is the one in Mumbai, even the Marathi press by and large ignored the ups and downs in the privatisation process this week, the submission of the Sreedharan report that lowered the marks given to the Anil Ambani group and, therefore, ruled it out of the race, and the government's decision to find a way around the report without formally burying it.

Except for Loksatta , no prominent Marathi newspaper in Mumbai carried any story on the government allowing FDI in single branded retail. Loksatta carried a report filed by news agencies on its front page. Ditto for the privatisation of Mumbai and Delhi airports "" none of the prominent Marathi newspapers carried any report on this. However, all carried reports on the Reserve Bank of India increasing interest rates and its impact on home loans. The Marathi newspapers on Wednesday were full of stories and analytical pieces about the results of by-election for the three seats of state Assembly and one seat of the Lok Sabha.

In the north, Dainik Jagran had an editorial that said the Congress was still not ready for any major economic reforms but didn't give any prominence to the news of either the airport privatisation or the FDI in single-brand retail. Dainik Bhaskar had a front-page anchor on the confrontation between the UPA government and the Left parties on the issue, but this was more of a political story. The story, and the box, referred to the decision to open up retail to FDI, but made no distinction between single-brand retail of the Reebok/Nike kind and the multi-brand retail of the Wal-Mart type, nor did the story mention (like the English-language papers did) that all FDI applications would still not be automatic but would have to come through the FIPB.

There was no reporting on the subject in Tamil papers like Dinamalar. Kannada dailies like Prajavani, Kannada Prabha and Vijay Karnataka used the stories on their inside pages.