write here, write now

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Are Augusts in Delhi more English than the ones in Chennai?

I have been reading the Delhi edition of The Hindu for the past one year and I have noticed one striking difference when compared to the Chennai edition. The pages are choc-a-bloc with ads by IAS entrance coaching institutes. These multilingual ads-in English, Hindi or a mixture of the two-are ultracolorful (yellow and red seem to be the most popular), come in various sizes-quarter page, half page, sometimes even a full page-and have very similar formats

  • A showcase of the institute’s credentials (“35 years of success”, “By Prof.B.Ramakotiah, simply the best Maths Teacher”, “most reputed courses ever”)
  • Flowery testimonials from Basant Garg, Hemant Jha, Nitin Kumar ,Sanjay Kumar etc accompanied by their passport photographs( Why do all of them have scrawny moustaches ? And why are they all always dressed in suits?)

On the contrary, in the Chennai edition, you see a lot of ads for JEE, MBBS, and increasingly nowadays, for CAT exams, but rarely for the IAS. I am guessing it is indicative of the fundamental difference in the aspirations of the youth. One explanation a friend of mine, a Delhite, came up with is that Northies read the Hindu only if they are giving the IAS or have to attend B-School GDs/interviews. (yeah, yeah, I agree there are probably “n” exceptions to this rule) He also clarified that the IAS craze is limited to students from UP and Bihar who migrate to Delhi for preparation as all the coaching centres are located there. If that’s true, then the institutes are doing a smart thing by focusing their advertising resources to ads in the Hindu as it has the maximum possibility of attracting the attention of their target segment. But then, the craze for IIT is equally strong in the north, especially in places like Kota, where the entire economy has piggybacked on the success of the JEE entrance market. So how come I rarely see ads for JEE and MBBS in the Delhi edition? Is it because they restrict themselves to more popular newspapers like the Hindustan Times and TOI? Can any enlightened soul tell me please…

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home