Word on the street

Radhika Raj finds out how small neighbourhood newspapers have been making a big difference

Four months ago when a Sikh man was gunned down by the Dera Saccha Sauda chief Ram Rahim Singh’s security guard in Mulund, Jayant Chheda was the first to get the news. “A resident recorded a car with armed men opening fire at the locals on his phone,” says Chheda. With a promise that the resident’s identity will be protected, Chheda passed on the video to larger media houses. While channels grabbed TRPs, Chheda’s neighbourhood Gujrati newspaper Gurjarmat got no credit. “This isn’t the first time,” Chheda says with a wry smile. “Journalists from mainline newspapers call us every morning. Our stories and photographs are used without credit.”

The Gurjarmat office has become a landmark of sorts. In spite of no visible signage, the 11-year-old office inside the withering Monani Bhavan in Mulund is known to most residents of the area. It isn’t just civic issues like broken roads and exposed garbage that Gurjarmat reports on. “People don’t have the courage to call a leading newspaper editor and tell them of a murder clipping like the one during the Ram Rahim Singh’s case. With us, they share a personal bond. I am right there bang in the middle of my target audience”, says Chheda. Reporter Jatin Kothari nods in agreement. “Our last front page story was about the Mulund Skywalk. For the mainstream media, a skywalk is synonymous with Bandra, Mulund is never mentioned,” he says.

Gurjarmat is one of the most successful neighbourhood newspapers right now with a circulation of 12,000 copies per week, a remarkable rise from the mere 3,000 copies it sold in the first year. “We were over-ambitious when we first started and printed 25,000 copies of our first edition,” laughs Chheda. “We didn’t know then that the population of Mulund was only 17,000!”

“A neighbourhood newspaper reflects the township’s culture,” says Prasoon Kumar, owner of Planet Powai, a six-year-old weekly English neighbourhood newspaper from Powai which has a whopping circulation of 70,000 copies. Kumar and his team consider themselves more than just reporters. Every problem that is reported in Planet Powai is resolved thanks to the paper. Staff reporter Pramod Chavan admires the change that the paper has brought about in such a short period. The newspaper approached the BMC two years ago for construction of roads in Powai. A signature campaign was started. Fifty thousand people signed the petition which was personally handed over to chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. “Seventy per cent of the roads in Powai have been repaired thanks to them,” says Padmini Mohikar, one of the many Powai residents who remain thankful to Planet Powai. “It has done more than resolve civic issues. The newspaper has saved lives.” Mohikar is referring to five-year-old Ajit Rana who needed a bone marrow operation. Planet Powai started a five-month campaign to collect funds. At the end, they had 11.5 lakhs for the operation. “I had almost given up hope. Who thought something like this would work,” says Harilal Rana, Ajit’s father.

Despite the support of residents, neighbourhood newspapers have been going through some tough times for the past few years. Around 12 papers including the prominent
Voice of Wadala, Cuffe Parade Times and Bandra Samachar, have closed office due to lack of funds. “Everything works on the basis of marketing these days and we have very few volunteers to campaign,” says Sharad Kumar, convener of Voice of Wadala. But it turns out that some Wadala residents are not willing to let the Voice of Wadala fade quietly away. They have approached Kumar to restart the newspaper. Kumar is hopeful. “We will be making a comeback soon. However, I think we will restrict
ourselves to a bi-monthly to save costs,” he says.

Gurjarmat has found a way around these problems largely because it is self-sustained and runs primarily on ad revenue from local shops and classifieds. The recent surge of malls has given local advertising in these newspapers a much-required impetus.
Advertisers are also drawn by the low rates — while an ad in a leading daily costs anything between Rs1,500 to Rs3,000 per square meter, one in a neighbourhood newspaper costs upwards of 150/sq m. Mehul Mewawala, owner of a high-end saloon in Powai prefers putting up an ad in Planet Powai. “The returns are good with local newspapers because it reaches my target audience,” says Mewawala. 

Apart from the problem of getting funds and inconsistent manpower, editors also have to deal with constant threats from builders and corrupt politicians. “I have to think twice before I print anything. They know that when they turn up, there won’t be more than two people in the office,” says Dharmendra Bhatt, editor of Bhandup News, a weekly run from a makeshift storage room with a staff of three people.

But Chheda is not fazed by all this. He runs a column every week — an entire page devoted to six corporators, one MLA and one MP in Mulund. It’s like a report card —  a list of projects and work done by the corporator gets reported every week. In case the corporator does not accomplish anything, a blank column is published under his name. “My daughter has been threatened, I have been beaten up. But I guess that is what keeps me motivated. They have been getting away for too long,” he says.

Ramesh Desai a regular reader of Gurjarmat believes that Chheda’s efforts are paying off. “A sign of a good neighbourhood newspaper is an active ward office and vigilant police station. Nowadays, a government official in Mulund thinks twice before cheating anyone.”
r_radhika@dnaindia.net