Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan launched the Mumbai edition of The Hindu in School at the Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan in Mumbai on Thursday.
Calling himself an avid reader of The Hindu , Chavan welcomed the paper’s entry into Mumbai. He said the paper needed to publish in the city in order to be seen as a ‘national newspaper’. He praised The Hindu’s ‘independent voice’ amid the corporatisation of the print media. He hoped a regular edition would soon follow.
The quality of education, the Chief Minister said, was the biggest challenge, not only in the State but across the country. Although the literacy rate was quantitatively impressive, at 82 per cent, the quality was worrying, he said. He said that his government had taken the initiative to improve access by having a primary school within a kilometre and a secondary school within five km of villages and towns across the State. Chavan said India can be a rich country only if it becomes a knowledge economy and, for this, the quality of education was important. In this endeavour, non-conventional approaches, such as
Siddarth Varadarajan, Editor, The Hindu , said younger readers had different interests. The school edition would remain true to the idea of The Hindu , and would explain things in a language a young audience could understand. He said that the school edition would not talk down to its young audience. It would have all the important news that goes into a regular edition but conveyed in an appropriate manner.
Varadarajan said the paper was committed to quality journalism and would remain steadfast to the nation-building values of its founders. He hoped the paper would serve as a platform for civilised debate on issues that animate, excite and sometimes unfortunately divide people in a city that has been no stranger to brittle public discourse.