Being a women interest magazine, BINDIYA has its well established competitions like MERI SAHELI, JAGRAN SAKHI, GRIH SHOBHA, GRIH LAKSHAMI, VANITA, MANORAMA, GOOD HOMEMAKER and recently launched HINDI FEMINA etc. Tripathi doesn’t consider even a single women Hindi magazine at the standard where he put his BINDIYA. But, that is not true only for women Hindi magazines, in fact it is true for almost all the Hindi magazines. Gone are those days when we used to refer DHARMYUG, SAPTAHIK HINDUSTAN, SARVOTTAM and all for good Hindi literature.
Content
Whatever is claimed about making it ‘different’ from others, it is more or less the same. Selection and compilation of articles seems that BINDIYA is trying to attract every segment and every aspect of an Indian woman. From a teenager to a mature woman, from a working lady to an entrepreneur and from a college going lady to a house wife, everybody is targeted to hook into this.
In order to satisfy such a broad set of audience, most of the time content gets diversified. If it not structured properly and not presented in a strict discipline, it becomes a mess. BINDIYA is carrying a good number of articles and that’s why it is divided into several departments. But entire magazine doesn’t seem structured.
Language & usages of words has lots of inconsistency across the magazine. With this kind of negligence, how can a magazine become a great literary magazine? And while working with Hindi publishing software, one should take care of few technical tricks which are totally ignored in BINDIYA and that is why it has lots of typo errors (though those can be corrected if subbing was perfect).
Design
Design is fine if it is not great. It has maintained consistency at some places but some place it has lost, may be in order to try something ‘different’. But it could be better if it was little disciplined and a few basics of designing were taken care. Stock images are used excessively and that disconnects a reader from the magazine.
Cover image is attractive but doesn’t go with the positioning of the magazine. Cover stories are arranged & placed badly and eventually the cover is turned a bad cover. Colors & design elements used in the magazine are outdated & give a substandard look to the magazine.
Printing
Printing quality of BINDIYA is good. Only a few images are of low resolution or may be those are picked up from the web and that’s why they are printed bad. Pre-press could correct the skin tones at least to make magazine more beautiful.
Product
Paper used for the magazine is good. Launch issue of BINDIYA is carrying center pinned 134 pages of regular A4 size and it is priced at Rs20. If you look at the quantity of reading material, it is really worth it. Quality of articles is also good and you can appreciate it if you can ignore the claims of being ‘different from other women magazine’ that is made in the editorial itself.
As conclusion, BINDIYA is just another women Hindi magazine that has to improve a lot to take a lead from others but for sure it can survive as it is without struggle even in the crowd of other competing magazines.
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