Prayatna

Indian's read the most at 10.7 hours a week - really?

The Telegraph reports that a survey of global reading habits has revealed that

 

India has come out on top.

Researchers from the National Opinion Poll contacted 30,000 people in 30 countries and compared how much time they spent watching television as against reading. India came top of the global reading chart with 10.7 hours per week per head - 4.2 hours higher than the global average.

The research was carried out by market research group NOP World as part of its annual study of consumer attitudes, values and behaviours. NOP World spokesman Nick Chiarelli said increased non-work computer use was cutting the amount of time which people around the world spent doing other things.

Chiarelli explained to The Telegraph: "There is a point of context. We are trying to represent urban, upscale India. We don't interview rural populations or subsistence level populations, of which there will be quite a lot in India. Our view is that India stacks up very well, there is striving for self-improvement in India and reading is one way of doing that."

Chiarelli added that there had been substantial resources put into education in India. "And this is payback time." As far as TV watching was concerned, "India comes fourth from bottom. The global average is 22 hours".

I'm glad The Telgraph asked, and the spokesman for the research group clarified, that this survey only covered urban, upscale India. I also wonder if it covered just English readers or also included Indian language readers.  Presumably the 10.7 hours Indians read eveyr week doesn't include newspaper reading - since the official press release put out by NOP World on their survey only mentions books. I wonder why reading newspapers doesn't count as reading.

Palkhivala Memorial lecture

The third Palkhivala memorial lecture is to be held on Saturday, September 06 at Chennai. The speaker will be Ram Jethmalani and he will be speaking on" The Judicial System - Need for Urgent Reforms" and the "Uniform Civil Code".

The Palkhivala Foundation in Chennai organises a public lecture by a leading mind on a Saturday in the last month of each quarter. The inaugural lecture on February 22, 2003 was by Soli Sorabjee on "Nani Palkhivala and the Constitution of India". The second lecture on June 21, 2003 was by N. Vittal on "Empowering the Deserving".

I attended both Sorabjee's and Vittal's lectures which were very interesting - I jotted down notes which I will post soon. I'm looking forward to Jethmalani's lecture.