Publishing Scenario of Periodicals in India, 1900-2013

The current study is conceived to assess the periodical publishing scenario of India for the period of 1900-2013 as registered with the Office of the Registrar of Newspaper for India (RNI). The periodicals under study include newspapers, news magazines, journals, community papers, serials, etc. Data was retrieved from the official website of the Registrar of Newspaper for India on July 31, 2013. Altogether, there were 116,531 periodical titles. India’s 1.2 billion population are served by 373,839,764 copies of newspapers daily, which is the largest number in the world. More than 23 different periodicities are registered with the RNI, under which different periodicals are published in more than 130 languages. The other areas covered under the study include: distribution of periodicals across the different states and union territories of India, languages used by each state, periodicity, annual and decade growth rate of periodicals, ranking of states on the basis of newspapers published from each individual state. Many other similar areas have been explored to understand the information dissemination pattern across India by these primary sources of information