INSTITUE OF MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH TECHNOLOGY

REPORT ON - INDIAN YOUTH READERSHIP TRENDS

SUBMITTED TO - PROF IRAM AHMED SUBMITTED BY- SUHANEE SHOME 2nd Sem (PGDM) ACADEMIC YEAR-(2010-2012)

DATE-26-03-2011

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
There is now growing acceptance of the fact that a country s social and economic progress greatly depends on its people having access to the vast expanse of knowledge provided by the printed word. This is all the more relevant to a country like India where the youth constitute a sizeable portion of its total population .Economic planners in India have always focused on its vital constituency. The National youth Policy, 2003 reiterated the commitment of the entire nation to the composite and all-round development of the young sons and daughter of India. In other words, youth power can be harnessed for the country s development only by providing young Indian with the right dose of education, motivation and exposure to the outside world. In today s world uneducated and malnourished workers find little place in productive employment. It is found that Developed countries undertake studies on regular basis to assess the readership status and follow the reading habits among their youth. However, in Developing countries like India, barring a few micro-level studies, no systematic investigation, at national level, has been conducted to assess the general readership status, reading habits and preference among the youth, and their dependence on various development indicators. It was against this backdrop that the National Book Trust, India, a premier national body for book publishing and promotion functioning under the Ministry of human Resource Development, government of India, approached the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) to undertake the National Youth readership Survey (NYRS-2009) to generate data for the present investigation. NYRS-2009 covered various aspects pertaining to reading habits and readership development among youth in a fairly detailed manner. The demographic profile of Indian youth, according to sex, age. Level education, occupation and other socio-economic characteristics has been prepared. How often, how much and what is the Indian youth reading? For answering this question the National Book Trust (NBT) in India undertook a readership survey among the youth of the country .The survey was conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research in 2009.According to Bipin Chandra, Chairman of NBT, We often say that youngsters these days just don t read much. In order to really assess the situation , we are conducting a national readership survey amongst the youth to see how much they read and what do they read .

METHODOLOGY
It is essential to apply the right methodology to make a research successful.Most of the researchers have adopted the survey methodology for these kinds of researches comprehensive results can be achieved through a survey. Although, conducting surveys are not an easy task, but the results are instant and easy to analyze. Target audiences are given a multiple choice questions which makes it easier for them to choose from. Surveys can give you a lot of data and it will assure you that you have a verifiable resources. It provides you direct knowledge of peoples opinions and it can give you good data for your analysis.

Definitely the most important aspect in the process of survey is the designing of questions that should measure the opinions, experiences and behaviors of the public. Ambiguous and confusing or for that matter bias questions simply distracts the audience. Adopting careful measures in designing a questionnaire gives a fair chance in achieving the results. Procedure in designing a questionnaire requires a thorough literature review and is evolved after many deliberations.

A questionnaire was designed for the youth to fill in. The objective of the research was to find out if Indian youth are more into reading newspaper or watching TV and which medium do they choose to get news details? Therefore when creating questionnaire questions were placed so that it can find out the frequency at which the Indian youth use these medium and which language they prefer. In this survey it was also tried to find out the affect of TV news channels on newspaper readership. The survey aimed at preparing a detailed demographic profile of the Indian youth (13-35 years) according to sex, age, level of education, occupation and other socio-economic characteristics. It was also expected to explore the usage pattern of various information sources, in the print and electronic media in terms of accessibility, frequency, time spent, place of exposure etc. It was an attempt to understand the readership status, reading habits and preferences of the Indian youth. According to the surveywith a sample of over 3,11,431 literate youth (1,02,021 rural and 2,09,410 urban) covering 432 villages in 207 districts as rural and 753 urban blocks in 199 towns as urbanis a first-of-its-kind exercise aimed at providing an objective understanding of the media consumption, reading habits and preferences of literate Indian youth.

Findings
Following are some of the facts and figures of our survey on Indian Youth Readership Trends. 1.During the survey it is found that in the year 2009 the Indian Youth population was estimated to be 459 million. 2.

Percentage of Youth in India

11.60%

38%

Youth Category(13-35 years) Below Youth Category

50.40%

Above Youth Category

From the pie diagram it is found that 38% of the total Indian population falls under the youth category which is in between 13-35 years. 3.

Percentage of Distribution of Literate Youth by Age Group

50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% 36.70% 22.10% Percentage of Distribution of Literate Youth by Age Group 41%

Of the countrys total youth population of 459 million, a large proportion, over 41%, is in the older 25-35 age group, followed by teenagers (36.7%) with the rest in the 20-24 age (22.1%).

4.

Literacy rate of Indain Youth

27% Literate Illiterate 73%

From the survey it is found that 73% of the Indian total population is literate i.e 333 million.

5.

Growth Rate of Indian Literate Youth in million

334 332 330 328 326 324 322 320 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 327 326 325 325.5 327.8 328.5 Growth Rate of Indian Population in million 331.5 330 333

Indias youth population grew at over 2.% to 459 million in 2009 from 390 million in the 2001 census, while the literate youth population grew at a more rapid 2.49% to 333 million from 324million.

6.

Distribution of Indian Youth on the basis of Areas

37.90% 62.10%

Rural Areas Urban Areas

From the pie diagram we can understood that the percentage of Literate Indian Youth in the Rural Areas is 37.9% and in Urban Areas is 62.10% . Growth was faster in urban India (3.15% a year) than in rural India (2.11%)

7.

Distribution of Indian Youth on the basis of religion

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 82%

Distribution of Indian Youth on the basis of religion 13% 2% Hindus Muslims Christian 2% sikh

From our survey it was found that the percentage of Indian literate youth is highest among Hindus.

8.

Distribution of Indain Literate Youth on the basis of Social Status

45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 40.30% 27% 22.70% 9.80%

General

Other Schedule backward caste(SC0 classes(OBC)

Schedule Tribes(ST)

Almost three-fourths (73%) of literate youth in the country are from schedule castes (22.7%), schedule tribes (9.8%) and other backward classes (40.3%), according to the survey. Currently, in our study it was found that caste-based reservation in educational institutes stands at 15% for SCs, 7.5% for STs and 27% for OBCs.

9.

% of Distibution of Indian Youth by level of education

9.60% 2.80% 4.80% Graduates Post Graduates Professional Course 82.80% Under Graduates

In our study it was found alarming that only 9.6% of the total Indian Youth are graduates.

10.

Percentage of Preferred Activities by the Indian Youth

0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 77% 63.40% 53% Television 22% Newspaper

Entertainment

News and Current Affaires

Television emerges as the biggest media, with over 77% of the 333 million literate, or 259 million, youth exposed to it. Newspapers too are able to maintain their dominance, with over half (53%) of all literate youth, or 177 million, exposed to them. But in terms of preferred media for news & current affairs, newspapers win hands down, with around two-thirds (63.4%) selecting them compared with just a third (22.2%) for television.

11. Youth interested in selected issues/topics

90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

Youth interested in selected issues/topics

Above is the distribution of the Youth interested in the various topics ,according to the survey.

12.

From the survey it was found that Television emerges the biggest engager, with average time spent a day at over 97 minutes, next Newspaper, then Radio , magazines and at last Internet. Though the Internet reaches fewer than 4% of all youth (8% in urban areas), time spent with the medium is proportionately higher at over an hour a day (70 minutes), reflecting the mediums stickiness.

RECOMMENDATION
Going through the survey results, I came across something interesting. When asked by the survey, about the motivation behind reading leisure books, it is seen that only 18.8% were encouraged by their parents. If our nation plan to make all youths in the age group of 15-25 active readers by 2025, then parents have to be made aware of the benefits of reading. Moreover, use of the internet as a source of information remains abysmally poor in India. As we know that Newspaper is not remaining the source of information.Its no more meant for news only.Newspaper became the versatile product which can be marketed as the FMCG product.Reader must look towards Newspaper as a Newsfotenment. It is an effective media than any other media.So at last from the survey it is understood that the Indian Youth have less reading habits and so in order to increase their reading habit they should read more and more Newspaper, Magazines, journals etc