Not much interest

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

, did not give much importance to the RBI's third quarter review of the monetary policy. Understandably, since the news came on the same day as the Tatas winning the Corus deal and India clinching the series against the West Indies, these hogged the limelight with almost all papers carrying them as the main headlines on their front pages. Most papers linked the two "victories" to draw a panoramic vision of a rising India. Parallels were drawn between Ratan Tata and Sachin Tendulkar both of who, in their own ways, did the country proud.

Bhaskar was the only paper to devote extensive coverage to the event. It presented the facts and figures related to the policy in a table on the front page, accompanied by a report detailing the changes in the repo rate. This report said that Finance Minister P Chidambaram supported the 25 basis point increase in the repo rate. The paper also devoted one of its two corporate pages to the news. The thrust of the coverage was how the RBI's moves would help keep inflation in check. The paper also got experts to comment on the policy. Both Rajasthan Patrika and Punjab Kesari touched upon the news only cursorily.

During the week, Hindi dailies were pre-occupied with primarily two news stories: Shilpa Shetty winning Big Brother and the communal violence in Gorakhpur. Punjab Kesari took the lead in appreciating Shilpa with the headline "Shilpa storms London after UP and Bihar," in a reference to a hit Bollywood song in which the actor performed.

In Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu press played up stories of the police opening fire on the CPM activists and villagers who were agitating against the ongoing work at the Polavaram project, and Shilpa Shetty emerging victorious on their front pages on Tuesday, relegating the RBI's expected hike in interest rates to their business pages. Leading Telugu newspapers Eenadu and Vaartha ran four-column stories as leads on their business pages with the headline "Loans may turn dearer". On Thursday too, the third quarter review of the annual monetary policy statement of RBI governor Y V Reddy was confined to business pages, thanks to the Tatas outbidding their Brazilian rival for acquiring Corus, the Indian cricket team clinching the ODI series 3-1 against the West Indies and the Andhra Pradesh High Court giving its green signal for "Greater Hyderabad". These stories were splashed across the front pages of the dailies as lead, second and third leads respectively. The news of the RBI making lending costlier, and Y V Reddy's statement that the move was to tackle inflation, was the lead on their business pages.

The news on RBI repo rate hike and the impact didn't hit the pages of Tamil daily Dinamalar. While it carried a couple of photos on cricket on page 1 in its edition dated February 1, its business section carried a four-column report on Tatas winning the Corus deal, along with a photograph showing Ratan Tata and B Muthuraman addressing a press conference in Mumbai. It also carried a big photo of the Corus steel factory in the Netherlands. The daily carried a three column report on Shilpa winning Big Brother along with a photo on page 1 in its January 31edition. While it carried a couple of photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit on Page 1 over the past week, the inside pages were dominated by reports on Sai Baba's visit and Shilpa Shetty.