Bearish south, bullish north

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

There appears to be a fairly strong split between the northern and the southern non-English-language daily newspapers when it comes to the coverage of the Sensex crossing the 8,000 mark "" most Hindi-language dailies featured this on their front pages while papers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu relegated it to their business pages for the most part.

While Dinamalar in Tamil Nadu did not even cover the event, the three Kannada papers "" Praja Vani, Kannada Prabha and Vijaya Karnataka "" reported the event on their business pages. Only Kannada Prabha, on September 12, had an edit on the Sensex crossing 8,000, indicating that this shows how the Indian economy is on the rise.

The edit also discusses that though this rise will welcome, one should view it with caution.

In the last 10 weeks, the Sensex has risen 1,000 points and it is essential to keep in mind that the regulator has stated that they will probe into any sort of manipulation, the edit noted. It goes on to add that this new mark in the Indian equity markets does not have any direct impact on the common man of the country.

In the north, Punjab Kesri had two front-page stories on the Sensex. One, on the day gold touched a 17-year high globally along with the day's Sensex, with a box explaining that the weakness of the dollar vis-a-vis the euro and the yen was the reason for increased demand for gold.

The second story, the day's front-page lead, was on the day the Sensex crossed 8,000, with a box within the story giving the dates on which the sensex crossed 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, and so on, all the way up till 8,000. The story also had a boxed statement of Finance Minister P Chidambaram where he said there was no real cause for worry.

Dainik Bhaskar had the 17-year gold-high and the Sensex story as a business page lead and the 8,000 story as the day's lead story.

An editorial on the Sensex, a day later, opined that bad times could not be ruled out since the market was heavily dependent on foreign institutional investors and they could pull out in case something adverse happened, and cited instances in the past when the Sensex fell dramatically.

The edit also pointed out, though, that at price-earning (PE) multiples of 16, the Sensex was more realistically priced than it was in 1992 when the PE was 50 or in 2000 when it was 27.

Rajasthan Patrika, which is aimed at a more single-state audience than Bhaskar, also carried the Sensex breaching 8,000 story on the front page, though as a long column one pointer with a box giving the finance minister's statement on their being no cause for worry.