We Indians, or rather the blogging ones at the very least, are logical, rational beings. Intellect drips from our very pore. It is thus quite the lament of many a tooth-gnashing intellectual [1][2] that the oft-revered Times of India newspaper has attained tabloid status. Slimes of India screams one. Times begone-from India screams another. One sarcastic take even deems it TOI-let paper.

What has caught the discerning intellectual’s ire is apparently the outrage that most of the front page news is about half-naked women, cricket, useless information about celebrities and the like.

Frankly, I quite support TOI in its tentative forays into tabloidhood. Indian society is much too conservative and prudish if you ask me. More tabloids, not less, are the key. We could also do with a couple of Alfred Kinsey type fellows I reckon.

While the aghast intellectual reader waits for his cheek to stop twitching, let me deepen the abysmal depths to which this blog has fallen and point out that tabloids have an economic benefit too! Yes, for I suspect there is a strong inverse correlation between prudishness and risk-taking innovation in a society. And the latter in turn has a strong positive correlation with economic progress…