| A sign of the changing times and, perhaps, the profile of their readers as well, Hindi newspapers in north India played up the credit policy in a manner that would do financial dailies proud. Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar had its lead story on the sensex and gold prices, and a front page anchor on the sensex "" the headline said that banks would now be a lot more choosy before giving home loans. The story had a box on the committee set up to look into concessions for the farm sector. Rajasthan Patrika, another north Indian daily, had it as the day's lead, and said in the intro to the story, that rates would rise between a fourth-and-a-half percentage point. The Punjab Kesri had the story as the front-page anchor. |
| In Karnataka, the credit policy announcement by the Reserve Bank of India was covered reasonably prominently as well by the three Kannada newspapers "" Praja Vani, Kannada Prabha and Vijaya Karnataka. Vijaya Karnataka had the report on page one in two columns as the third story of the day. |
| The copy was accompanied by a highlights and a picture of RBI governor Y V Reddy. Praja Vani and Kannada Prabha, on the other hand, had this report on their respective business pages as a three- and four-column spread, respectively. Praja Vani had an edit on this subject appreciating the stability in interest rates. |
| Surprisingly, the credit policy was low on the priority list of Marathi newspapers. While not a single story appeared in Maharashtra Times' Wednesday edition, Loksatta published a small story in the inside pages. |
| The only prominent Marathi newspaper that published the credit policy announcement story on the front page was Sakal. This newspaper's story, focusing on the likely interest rate hike for housing loans talked of the technical aspects of the policy such as liquidity in the economy, inflation and so on. |
| Maharashtra Times tried to correct the lapse in its Thursday edition by publishing detailed reactions from the property market to the RBI's policy. Loksatta, which wrote an editorial on the issue, advocated that the RBI should have taken a stricter approach to the home loan issue as the current boom in the property market was largely driven by the easy availability of home loans and that this was making the middle-class dream of a home that much more costly. |
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