A Passage to India

Posted on March 30, 2010 in Uncategorized

On 16 March 2010, the Oxford SYP welcomed guests to a speaker meeting in the Main Conference Room at Oxford University Press. Speaking on the history and future of publishing in India were: Tony Dale (previously Editorial Manager in the International Division for Oxford University Press), and Nigel Portwood (Secretary to the Delegates, Oxford University Press).

Tony Dale first took us through the history of publishing in India. Having worked in Dar es Salaam, Shanghai, Pakistan, South Africa, Romania, Egypt, Uganda and Malawi, Tony has accrued a lot of international experience, but he noted that none of those places quite got under his skin like India.

After a short introduction, Tony went on to talk about the rich history of publishing in India. Starting with the Moguls and the first printing presses in around 1556, Tony described how printing had already been a tradition in India long before the British arrived. Then, in 1834, Thomas Babington Macaulay arrived and began thinking about what to do to educate the elite Indians who were to run the Raj. This ended in the creation of three universities that would school the upper classes in India and teach them English. The problem before Macaulay was clear, and he stated the issue simply: ‘We have a fund to be employed as government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country. The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it?’ Which language should be supported as the medium of instruction? The Council of Education was divided: Orientalists on the one hand favoured Sanskrit, Persian or Arabic, classical traditional languages which were, however, not widely spoken, while Anglicists were clear that English would prove superior. (Current Science, Vol. 81)

Some thirty years afterwards, the Hunter commission began to educate the masses. The commission recommended that the power of controlling the entire system of primary education should be transferred to the District and Municipal Boards. It also oversaw the development of secondary education.

At a similar time, the first Western publishers began to move into India. Companies like MacMillan began to publish books that were mainly managed by staff who were sent to India from other countries. OUP were to arrive slightly later, at the turn of the century, and by 1930 lots of education books were being published for the local markets.

Indigenisation only began to occur in India in the 1970s. By then, locals were managing the projects and commissioning books that were specific to the immediate geographic markets. Since then, publishing in India has become much more technologically advanced and many specialist tasks, such as typesetting and data conversion, are now outsourced to Indian companies. India is becoming a truly global player of publishing and in a market that continues to grow, Western publishing houses are benefiting from the indigenous offices out there.

After an introduction about his fascinating route from Engineering graduate at Cambridge University to Secretary to the Delegates at Oxford University Press, Nigel Portwood began to talk about the general trends of globalization within publishing and how that would affect countries like India.

‘It doesn’t matter what area of publishing you are in. All areas of the publishing industry are pretty much the same, apart from the economics,’ he told us. This is especially true if you compare science and technology publishing with academic and trade publishing.

Nigel then began to explain why publishing in particular has suddenly come under the media spotlight. He put this down essentially to two main causes:

1) Digitization is changing how we price, who we compete against, and what new threats we face. Suddenly publishers are squaring up the technological companies. Users are expecting eContent to mean free content. And the risk of piracy is suddenly greater than ever. But most importantly, we need to bear in mind that despite all of the hype, digital publishing is still only 5% of total revenues at the moment. Even in five years time this figure will probably only rise to about 10%.

2) Globalization driven by demographics is seeing more people investing in education, more people wanting to be entertained and a greater convergence in international taste for literature and popular culture.

India is a part of this global phenomenon, but the relationships aren’t just between Britain and India, or the U.S. and India. The relationships in a global world are like a web, with India talking to South Africa, who in turn are talking to Hong Kong. Resources are being shared between countries and India is doing very well at offering intellectual services to the global community.

To close, both speakers talked of the importance of gaining experience from as broad a background as possible. Working internationally, even in a different function from your current one, will stand you in excellent stead for an increasingly global world where indigenous markets begin to take greater importance and languages like Mandarin become another international standard. India, meanwhile, will remain at the technological forefront, and that will only continue as digitization gains in value.