Children in the news
Newspapers once took children beyond textbooks.
What happens when they disappear?
Published at Deccan Herald here. Thanks to the team at Deccan Herald.
One of the happy memories of the school days, for many of us, is reading the newspaper at the library - we began with the sports or the entertainment page and then slowly moved to the other pages. Another major attraction was the magazines; Illustrated Weekly was a favourite with its large format and eclectic content, and India Today followed suit. There would also be the colourful weekend newspapers like the Sunday Observer or the, loaded with numbers, salmon pink newspaper that we picked out of intrigue. Skimming pages was fun as was the element of surprise these newspapers and magazines brought in. Today when I look back, they took us beyond the text-books and helped us realize that there was a lot else happening in the worlds beyond our small worlds. They got us hooked on reading, made us aware of our interests, and our country, and enabled us to delve deeper into these. Newspapers and magazines were special and dear then; courtesy them we looked forward to quizzes, debates, essays, elocutions, and conversations.
News stories from the recent months, however, tell a different story. They make me wonder about the children growing up today in the absence of newspapers and magazines.
55 A H Wheeler book stores across railway stations in Bombay have shut down during the recent months. Those of us for whom train journeys meant happy reading times, the A H WHeelers, haven for newspapers and magazines, were as crucial as the train-engines themselves. Today the A H Wheeler in my town sells chips and cold-drinks, and the 4 other places I frequented for newspapers and magazines during my younger years have all shut down. The A H Wheeler’s began at Allahabad in 1877 and they saw through a lot over the century and half. But, could not survive our apathy to reading. It is all about our reading habits.
The Indian Readership Survey, an annual nationwide survey to estimate the number of newspaper readers, has not been conducted since 2020; this in itself is a powerful message! We have some broad figures. Newspapers in India, all put together, sell about 6 crore copies each day. A decade ago the numbers were twice as much. But, despite this drop we are amongst the top 3 countries across the world when it comes to newspaper sales. Not just in India - the numbers are plummeting globally.
The Press Gazette-Similar web data for April 2026 states that out of the world’s largest 50 English-language news websites 44, including several of India’s bigger news brands, saw global visits decline year-on-year. This downfall intensified further in April 2026 itself with 47 out of the 50 recording month-on-month traffic declines. So, the cliche that newspapers and magazine sales are falling as people have shifted from print to mobile phones is, like most cliches, untrue. We are keeping away from newspapers and magazines and are unaware of the worlds beyond the small world that our phones (and the algorithms that guide the content ) show us.
Schools and children reflect what is happening in the society; we don’t read, the children don't. To understand what this is doing to us, our children, let us take a quick look at just one factor for now - awareness on current-affairs. Newspapers were a bridge between their Civics textbooks and the actions in the real world and we have taken that bridge away. Grade 9 (ICSE) students I recently taught were confused between the terms PM, MP and MLA, leave aside MLCs and Mayors; they were equally lost when asked to name our president and vice-president! How good is this for them, for us as a society, for democracy (they will be ready to vote in 4 - 5 years)? Neither is my experience an aberration nor are children the only ones responsible. The authorities have grasped the grimness of the situation for during the recent months states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Kerala have made reading newspapers a mandatory activity at schools. This is not just about current-affairs but also about language-communication, logical-thinking, analysing-discerning skills and a lot else. How effective these measures are, only time will tell. But the authorities have woken up; what are we waiting for?
Previously published pieces on similar lines
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