The Turmoil in Marathi Media

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Layoffs, Pay Cuts, Unfair Contracts: Journalists Working In Language Media and Small Editions Face Exploitation Every Day

Lokmat has laid off close to 700 of its employees, of which about 30% are journalists, from editions and newsrooms spread across Maharashtra, Delhi and areas bordering Madhya Pradesh, HuffPost India has learnt from interviews with reporters and a petition filed in the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High court by the Maharashtra Union of Working Journalists.

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Lokmat isn’t the only language media group that is doing it. Sakal Media Group, headed by NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s nephew Abhijit Pawar, has shut down its English edition Sakal Times and Goa edition Gomantak Times and has also closed operations of the Marathi flagship paper in four districts- Akola, Jalgaon, Nanded, and Solapur. Sakal’s downsizing has rendered over 100 journalists jobless.

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The recent layoffs of hundreds of journalists at The Hindu and the Hindustan Times has sparked understandable concern over the health of India’s news business, yet the large-scale decimation of non-English newsrooms has inspired little comment. While the English language press dominates the national conversation — particularly on social media — the non-English press is arguably more influential and reaches tens of thousands more readers. The discord in the Marathi news ecosystem is symptomatic of similar problems in language papers across the country. Many of these layoffs have been explained as a consequence of the novel coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing national lockdown and economic recession.