Youth Readership Survey, India: Some Trends

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.”
Some findings of the survey were carried in a news report by the Financial Express in February. Before sharing these results, a few words about the objectives of the survey. 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 Financial Express, The survey—with 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 urban—is a first-of-its-kind exercise aimed at providing an objective understanding of the media consumption, reading habits and preferences of literate Indian youth.

Survey results, reported in the Financial Express, are:

1. India’s 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 2.5% to 333 million from 273 million. Growth was faster in urban India (3.15% a year) than in rural India (2.11%)
2. Of the country’s total youth population of 459 million, literate youth constitute around three-fourths, numbering 333 million. Literate youth in rural India number 207 million (62.1% of the total) and 126 million (or, 37.9%) in urban areas. 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 bracket (22.1%).
3. 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, caste-based reservation in educational institutes stands at 15% for SCs, 7.5% for STs and 27% for OBCs.
4. Awareness of government flagship social schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is higher among rural youth compared to city dwellers.
5. 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.
6. Book readers (non-syllabus) number around 83 million (25% of literate youth), of which 39 million are in urban areas and 44 million in rural India.
7. Television emerges the biggest engager, with average time spent a day at over 97 minutes. Radio (61 minutes), magazines (44 minutes) and newspapers (32 minutes) lag far behind. 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 medium’s stickiness.
8. Newspapers and the Internet share a high out-of-home exposure. Around half of all youth get to read a newspaper outside their homes, with shops/cafes/restaurants and neighbors as chief access points. Around two-thirds accessed the internet at cyber cafes and/or the workplace.

Detailed statistics of the survey are available at the special issue of the Financial Express.

Going through the survey results, I came across something interesting. When asked by the survey, about the motivation behind reading leisure books, only 18.8% said they were encouraged by their parents. If the NBT’s plan to make all youths in the age group of 15-25 active readers by 2025 is to be realized, 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.