Raijor Batori

Overview

Raijor Batori is an Assamese fortnightly magazine published from Guwahati by the Directorate of Information and Public Relations, Government of Assam. Its name translates, in sense, as news of the people, and that is precisely its brief: it is the Assam state government's own magazine for carrying its plans, policies, programmes and development schemes to the general public, in the people's language, on a regular fortnightly cycle.

The directorate describes the magazine's main objective as creating awareness among the people by keeping them informed about the plans, policies, programmes and development schemes of the government. It carries the state's news, views and achievements, and its stated aim is to mobilise popular support among the general mass. Few magazine profiles are as candid about their purpose: Raijor Batori exists to bring the people of Assam closer to their government.

History: a government newspaper from 1972

Raijor Batori began its journey in 1972 as, in the directorate's words, the only government newspaper from the Directorate of Information and Public Relations, Assam. It was not founded as a magazine at all, but as the state information department's own newspaper, at a time when the Assamese press was expanding and the state government wanted a publication of its own through which official information could reach the mass of people directly.

That newspaper publication was later halted for some time. The directorate's account does not present the interruption as an ending, however. It says the title always acted as a facilitator and a strong medium for reaching out to the mass people, and that this continuing value is a major reason it was brought back. The title's first life as a newspaper, its pause, and its return in a new form together make it one of the longer-lived names in Assam government publishing.

Revival as a fortnightly magazine in 2016

Raijor Batori was republished in the form of a fortnightly magazine in December 2016. The directorate's publications page describes the same relaunch in complementary terms: the department started publishing Raijor Batori in a revamped format as a fortnightly magazine, with the view of disseminating the developmental plans and programmes of the government among the people, and a special editor was appointed for the purpose.

The change of form is significant. A government newspaper competes, at least in appearance, with the daily press; a fortnightly magazine does something different. It can compile, explain and illustrate the government's programmes at greater length, organise them thematically, and present development work as a continuing story rather than a stream of announcements. The revived Raijor Batori was designed for that explanatory role, with dedicated editorial leadership rather than as an incidental departmental handout.

Publisher and editorial leadership

The publisher is the Directorate of Information and Public Relations, Government of Assam, based in Guwahati, the city given in this directory entry. The directorate is the state government's communication department, and its publications work, as it describes it, covers books and magazines highlighting the programmes, plans and achievements of the government, the culture and traditions of different communities, the importance of different places of the state, and its festivals.

For the revived magazine, the directorate appointed a special editor, and its archive page names the editor of Raijor Batori as Sri Bhupendra Nath Bhattacharjee. Naming an editor on the official archive page matters for a government magazine: it identifies editorial responsibility for a title whose content is, by design, the government's account of its own work.

Language, frequency and format

Raijor Batori is an Assamese-language magazine, published fortnightly. The language choice is the core of its design. Assam's government could publish in English for officials and institutions, but a magazine whose mission is to bring the people of Assam closer to the government, and to encourage people, especially the youth, to participate in and benefit from welfare schemes, has to speak to those people in Assamese.

Its issues are distributed in digital form through the directorate's website, where the Raijor Batori archive page offers issues for download. The archive listing includes a run identified as the magazine's 10th year, with issues numbered 4 and 6 through 12 available, evidence of a continuing fortnightly publishing programme with numbered issues that readers can retrieve after publication.

What the magazine carries

The magazine's content follows directly from its stated objective. It informs readers about the plans, policies, programmes and development schemes of the Government of Assam, carries the state's news, views and achievements, and places great emphasis on encouraging the youth and people in general to participate in, and avail themselves of, the different welfare schemes available for their benefit.

That emphasis distinguishes a development magazine from a simple record of official announcements. Raijor Batori is not only meant to tell readers what the government has done; it is meant to connect eligible readers to schemes they can actually use. In a state where welfare and development programmes depend on awareness for their uptake, a fortnightly Assamese magazine performing that connecting work, issue after issue, is a practical instrument of governance as well as a publication.

Place within the directorate's publications

Raijor Batori sits within a wider, changing stable of directorate publications. The department's publications page records that in the financial year 2016-17, the year of the magazine's revival, it also published Asoma and Assam Information, a table calendar in English and Assamese, the Assam Year Book 2016, Teleguide 2016 and folders. It also records that the department eventually stopped publishing Asoma, Assam Information, the Assam Year Calendar and the Assam Year Book 2016.

Later years' output listed by the department includes proposed and published items such as the Assam Year Book 2018, Teleguide 2018, a book on achievements, leaflets, and, in 2020-21, Smritigrantha for the state-level observance of National Press Day 2020, with downloadable lists of publications for the financial years 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26. Against that background of titles started and stopped, Raijor Batori's survival and revival stand out: it is the directorate publication with a history reaching back to 1972 that the department chose to bring back in a revamped format, rather than replace with a new name.

Audience and purpose

The magazine's audience is the general public of Assam, described by its publisher in terms of the general mass, with particular emphasis on young people. Its mission, as the archive page states it, is to bring the people of Assam closer to the government. Those formulations define a readership quite different from that of a commercial magazine: not a market segment to be sold to advertisers, but a citizenry to be informed about, and connected to, public programmes.

That purpose also explains the magazine's tone and selection of material. News, views and achievements of the state, developmental plans and programmes, and encouragement to use welfare schemes are not a random mixture; they are the components of a government-to-citizen channel that predates social media by decades and continues alongside it. Where the directorate's other channels handle immediate announcements, the fortnightly magazine provides the considered, compiled version.

Digital presence and archives

Raijor Batori's digital home is the Directorate of Information and Public Relations website, dipr.assam.gov.in. The directorate maintains both a publications page, which describes the magazine's revamped fortnightly format and lists the department's publications by financial year, and a dedicated Raijor Batori archive page, from which issues of the magazine can be downloaded.

That archive function is valuable beyond convenience. A government magazine that can be downloaded issue by issue becomes a public record of what the state government chose to publicise, and how it presented its development programmes to Assamese readers, from the revival in December 2016 onward. For researchers of Assam's governance and media, those downloadable issues are primary source material available directly from the publisher.

How to read Raijor Batori

Readers can access Raijor Batori through the Directorate of Information and Public Relations, Assam, and download issues from the magazine's archive page on the directorate's official website, dipr.assam.gov.in, the address listed for the magazine in this directory. The publications page of the same website provides the wider context of the department's books, magazines, calendars and year books.

The essential profile is straightforward: an Assamese fortnightly magazine from Guwahati, published by Assam's information and public relations directorate, begun in 1972 as the directorate's government newspaper, halted for a time, and republished in December 2016 in a revamped magazine format under a specially appointed editor, to carry the state government's plans, policies, programmes and achievements to the people of Assam, and to draw them, especially the young, into the welfare schemes created for their benefit.