Ashok Mahadevan, Editor – Reader’s Digest,

The son of a Naval officer, Ashok Mahadevan attended nearly a dozen schools, the final two being Mayo College, Ajmer, and Tonbridge School, UK. He then went on to Columbia University, New York, and barely managed to scrape through with a BA in Sociology. However, he made up for his mediocre academic performance by taking part in numerous demonstrations against America's prosecution of the war in Vietnam, including the famous March on the Pentagon in 1969. The previous year, after camping for nearly a week in the office of the president of Columbia University, Mahadevan, along with hundreds of other Columbia students, had been arrested and briefly incarcerated.

After his BA, Mahadevan got an MA in Journalism from Columbia and worked for a year and a half in a small-town paper in the American Midwest. He then returned to Mumbai, and, after a couple of false starts in public relations, joined the Indian edition of Reader's Digest in December 1974 as deputy editor. He became Editor in 1982. Apart from articles for Reader's Digest, Mahadevan has written for numerous Indian publications. In conversation with Kalyan Kar of exchange4media, Mahadevan reflects on the 50-year run that Digest has just completed in India, and discusses what makes it arguably the most popular magazine even today. Excerpts:

Q. Congratulations on reaching the 50th year milestone in India. As editor, how does it feel? Any special thoughts?

Thank you. I have been Editor of Reader’s Digest for 22 years, which is almost half the period that Reader’s Digest has been in India. While that makes me feel quite ancient, at the same time I am proud to be associated with such a great and universally loved magazine for so long. It’s a remarkable magazine. Let me tell you a true story. Some years back, a reader met me, and asked, ‘Do you know my last wish?’ He paused and then answered, ‘When I die I want the Digest to be in my hand.’ It is this devotion to the magazine which is unusual. It’s not a normal magazine; it inspires, gives hope. We don’t just write about a problem; we look for somebody who has lived the problem, and tackled it. It has been a privilege to work for the RD as it has enabled me to meet many unknown individuals from different walks of life with great achievements, people who are idealists, but mostly unsung. Meeting them has been a very inspiring experience over the years. It is this inspiration that we try to pass on to our readers, but without trivializing those experiences.

Q. What are the plans to mark the golden jubilee of Reader’s Digest in India?

We do have some events in mind, but they are yet to be finalized. Editorially, the special commemorative ‘Collector’s Edition’ that has just been released by President Kalam marks an important golden jubilee event.

Q. Can you encapsulate chronologically the Indian journey of RD?

The Reader’s Digest was launched in 1922 in the US. For the first 20 years only the US edition was available in India. In 1938 the British edition was launched. By 1954, the Digest was selling 40,000 copies in India; so an Indian edition began to be printed in England for the Indian market that year. By the late 50s, the magazine began to be printed in India itself. In the mid-60s, Rahul Singh, Khushwant Singh’s son, became the first Indian editor of the Reader’s Digest***, and he began the development of Indian articles.

In the late 70s, because of FERA regulations, the foreign company had to dilute equity by selling to individuals in the Tata Group, leading to the setting up of RDI Print & Publishing, an Indian company for publishing the RD. In October 2003, Living Media Group got the license from the American company to publish the Digest in India.

It’s been a stupendous journey all along. Today, the paid circulation is around 600,000 copies, making it perhaps the largest circulated magazine in the Indian market. A far cry from the 5,000 copies that it sold in the early years of its coming to India.

Q. How similar or dissimilar would an RD issue of a particular month be from country to country?

A similar article across different editions would be purely by chance. Like the US edition had this article recently, “Why Bush won”. This is a topical piece, and many editions would have run it.

Q. If I am not mistaken, you have an enviable record of being the longest serving editor of a publication. How is that you never looked beyond RD?

Perhaps it is a combination of laziness and loving it! Honestly, I never felt the urge to leave the Digest. Even in the past, editorial people have rarely left the Digest.

Q. These days selling a product, including media products, is all about branding, niche market and target audiences. Reader’s Digest has apparently never fallen prey to such marketing punditry in the sense that RD is neither a niche product nor does it target a particular audience. So, what makes it tick so successfully?

That’s very true. I think the reason is that the Digest appeals to a wide range of people in different age groups. Much of the Reader’s Digest’s content is about story-telling, true stories written in a fiction format. Every issue of the Digest also has two or three articles devoted to self-improvement. People like its package, because it is practical, and contains commonsensical ideas. There is also humour in the content. It is this huge range and variety in content and the fact that the articles are very well-written that has ensured its place as the most popular magazine in India. Parents encourage their children to read the Reader’s Digest.

Q. Content-wise, does RD follow a similar mix and package across countries? Also, to what extent is editorial autonomy allowed by the parent editorial board in the US? The Digest has a similar content package everywhere. The sections are the same. The American parent company wants a similar face to the magazine wherever it is published. For instance, I, as the India Editor, report to the Editorial Director based in the US on editorial matters. In the Reader’s Digest set-up, the business departments cannot dictate to editorial. The Editor can reject ads if they are not in keeping with the magazine’s character, like cigarette and liquor ads, or ads that border on obscenity. At the same time, the business side can’t seek article related ads.

Q. One finds a degree of localization of content in recent times. When and how did that come about?

Yes, this trend started with Rahul Singh, the first Indian Editor of RD. As a rule, an RD issue is not supposed to have more than 25 per cent local content. However, let me mention this, we are nowhere near hitting that target yet. A reason for that is that it is not easy to get RD type articles with the quality that we insist upon from Indian journalists and writers. This is despite the fact that we pay very well for sourced articles.

Q. There is a timelessness about many of the articles published in RD, especially those on real life dramas, courage in the face of extreme adversity, etc. How does RD achieve such consistent standards in locating these articles? Are they commissioned, or just selected from among unsolicited articles mailed to RD offices all over the world?

It’s both. The magazine had started off as a digest of articles from other publications. Suppose Esquire magazine carries an article on an earthquake in Peru, which we in RD find very interesting. So we take permission from Esquire to reproduce their article; if they want any payment, we make it if we can afford it. Thereafter, we cut and use it as per our requirement. But we also commission articles. Like, for instance, when a passenger train fell into a lake in Kerala sometime back. Newspapers wrote about many courageous acts by ordinary people at the accident site. We commissioned a writer to write a piece for the Digest.

Q. Is there a centralized content selection team in the US?

No, we don’t have a centralized editorial selection team in the US. We follow a different process. Every edition across the world generates articles. These are put on a common website that we have. It is like a pool of articles. Each editor decides what to take from this pool. Mind you, this is a gigantic pool to source articles from.

Q. Any changes on the anvil in terms of packaging, format, content, especially since RD has a new owner in India?

Not really. The new owners can’t do that. The reason is that only the US parent can decide on issues like format and content; they want consistency in the face and flavour of the Reader’s Digest. Only pricing and business decisions are Living Media’s.