Narendra Modi‘s stunning victory in the 2019 general elections has resulted in a not unusual journalistic overkill that has been the hallmark of his first five years in office.
The country’s biggest English newspaper has an all-Hindi headline, ‘Chowkidar’s Chamtkaar‘, but at least there is a semblance of sobriety in most the headlines and coverage of many of them.
The triumphalism is more evident in the Hindi dailies where the difference between the BJP’s campaign slogans and daily newspaper journalism blur if not vanish in the moment of excitement. The further the newspaper is from the Hindi heartland the lesser is the deference bordering on reverence. This is most reflected in the South Indian newspapers. The Marathi newspapers are caught in between. Foreign newspapers naturally are more circumspect, as indeed are the big business dailies. On the big day, Gujarati newspaper design range from the sublime to the sad.The headline of the day probably belongs to Vijaya Karnataka, the Kannada daily now owned by The Times group.
IJR 