In a fortnight marked by silly season stories in the news cycle, not to play down the macabre border beheadings or entertainment value of bickering in Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), there is little consistency in news narratives which engaged either reporting or commentary in the Hindi print media. Which provided the kind of lull that you sometimes require to re-look at aspects of the Hindi print media which are beyond the immediacy of news stories.

The lull gave us the chance to reflect on how the Hindi Press is engaging with the world of ideas in its pages. Is there some truth to the perception that Hindi dailies and periodicals have turned philistine – a word with which it would never be associated in the heyday of Hindi publications?

Three years ago, speaking at an awards function, Hindi journalist and author Mrinal Pande used Habermas’ idea of refeudalisation to refer to the expansion of Hindi media at the turn of 21st century. She argued, however, that such expansion and new-found financial strength didn’t change its position in the hierarchy of social and cultural clout. What Pande could have added is that the growth of Hindi media has also entailed streamlining of content in a way that has evidently shrunk the space for engaging with ideas.

In some ways, market logic has significantly challenged the intellectual autonomy of Hindi press – especially when you recall its glory days when pages brimmed with ideas. When Dainik Bhaskar trimmed its Opinion page and did away with the Op-Ed four years back, it was a sign of things to come. Hindustan has followed its flagship English publication, Hindustan Times in shifting to a leaner commentary page.

With newspaper proprietors doubling up as editors and editor-in chief Sanjay Gupte writing a regular column, Dainik Jagran has seen some sense in having a vibrant Edit page. That, however, hasn’t stopped the country’s most widely-read daily from dispensing with the Op-Ed page. Amar Ujala has also been curtailing its Opinion section for the last two years or so.

Beating this trend, quite surprisingly, is the newspaper you least expect to be keen on daily pontifications. Navbharat Times has reinvigorated its Edit pages, giving writers more space to accommodate diverse views. It seems to be following in the footsteps of its parent brand, The Times of India’s reinvention of its Opinion page. What, however, has been disappointing is the marginalisation of ideas in publications with niche readership like Jansatta.

While researching for her book, Headlines from the Heartland, journalist and media critic Sevanti Ninan met a school teacher in Bihar. He was so addicted to his daily dose of Jansatta’s Opinion pages and its literary supplement that he would travel 30 kilometres every day to get a copy for himself from the state capital, Patna. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t be so enthusiastic now. The daily has a slimmer Opinion section and has no Op-Ed page. That’s a point of departure from its parent publication, The Indian Express which has prioritised the need to have two pages marked for ideas – The Editorial Page and The Ideas Page.

With Books sections no longer finding favour with editors across the media scene, other than for Hindustan Times, the Hindi press is no exception. Jansatta’s Sunday literary pullout, the lone saving grace, has also been whittled down. As Dainik Bhaskar’s weekly peep into the Hindi publishing scene has been too erratic, the engagement of Hindi newspapers with the world of letters has narrowed down to the point of being inconsequential. That’s quite a hiatus from a time when pages of the Hindi press were curated by the literary sensibilities of stalwarts such as Muktibodh, Dharmvir Bharti, Yashpal, Harishankar Parsai amongst others.

The early literary promise of the Hindi edition of India Today with its annual Sahitya Visheshank flattered to deceive. Interestingly, the media group now organises events such as Sahitya Aaj Tak. Its literary value for Hindi audience can be measured from the fact that it has Kumar Vishwas and Chetan Bhagat as key speakers.

The challenges to intellectual autonomy, however, has largely been a case of self-affliction for Hindi media. It may be traced to what journalist Rahul Pandita identified as the failure of senior editors to encourage and nurture the intellectual growth of young reporters and editors in Hindi media. What we see today is either lack of in-house resources or lack of confidence in them.

Too many articles and columns in Hindi newspapers are translated versions of articles originally written in English. For instance, translated articles of Swapan Dasgupta and Brahma Chellaney appear regularly in Dainik Jagran, while Rajdeep Sardesai, Shashi Tharoor and Shekhar Gupta are translated for Dainik Bhaskar. The list is long, as all major Hindi dailies have outsourced opinion-mongering to the regular names writing for English media – especially when it comes to economic issues and foreign policy.

This is not restricted to print. Even the talking heads on Hindi news channels are from the English-speaking intelligentsia, with only a few being from the rare bilingual breed. In case such alarm about the presence of English voices is confused with insularity, one may clarify that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of having views and perspectives from the English space. However, what’s disturbing is that the Hindi news space has opted for a lazy way out of investing in and trusting its in-house expertise.

In the process, it also loses out on discussing perspectives that media professionals catering to the Hindi heartland readership can bring. In stark contrast, the Hindi intelligentsia is not present in the English media space in any significant way. Their presence in the English news space is generally restricted to participation in discussions when they are asked to come out from hibernation to share their two cents on an election in any of the Hindi heartland states.

In the flux of an ever-changing news landscape and its growing reach, it’s important that the Hindi press doesn’t lose sight of the larger ideas that are shaping the times and the world we are living in. To do so, it will require the Hindi media to reclaim its autonomy of perspective, without drifting to or borrowing from English media discourse. If the undoing of its growth was “refeudalisation”, the way to renew confidence in its worldview may well lie in decolonisation.

Through the Hindi Lens is a fortnightly look into the world of Hindi news.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @anandvardhan26