Do newspapers make politicians more responsive?

Over the last decade or so, Andhra Pradesh has seen a spectacular growth in local editions of Telugu language newspapers. There are atleast eight news dailies, with district tabloid editions, covering all the 23 districts in the State. Other states too are undergoing a similar revolution in information dissemination and opinion making, albeit at a slower pace and smaller scale.

What has been the impact of this development on local politics? Has it made local politicians more responsive? Have these local editions succeeded in highlighting the major issues of public concern? Has this surge in local information made people more aware and stoked their civic sensibilities? What has been their role in fuelling the "competitive populism" that is sweeping politics today?

An NBER working paper by David Stromberg and James M. Snyder Jr. have found that congressmen in the US from districts with newspapers that aggressively cover local politics tend to work harder to represent the interests of their constituents. Such congressmen are more likely to break with their parties, more likely to bring home pork-barrel projects, and more likely to participate actively in committee hearings than congressmen from districts without a strong local press.

An intutive assessment would appear to answer in the affirmative to all the aforementioned questions. The polity in a hitherto semi-feudal society like Andhra Pradesh has undoubtedly become much more responsive since the early nineties. Crucial development issues like education and health care has been brought to the forefront of government interventions and electoral debate, especially in local elections. Social and economic empowerment has occured at an unprecedented pace during this period. Electoral politics has become much more intense and competitive, with candidates trying to outdo each other in their promises to constituents.

This surge in awareness has been most marked in villages and mofussil towns. Electoral turnout in local body elections, one of the simplest barometers of civic involvement, has increased substantially in these areas, whereas it has declined in urban centers like Hyderabad. Interestingly, the penetration of these local editions has been least effective in cities like Hyderabad, where the English dailies (with their more state and national focus) have crowded out the local issue oriented vernacular dailies.

(HT: Freakonomics)