What were the effects of the spread of print culture for poor people in nineteenth century India?

The spread of print culture in 19th century India facilitated access to information, education and diverse perspective. The emergence of Vernacular literature even helped fostering broader literacy and awareness among them. Enlightening essays were written against caste discrimination and its inherent injustices. Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of ‘low caste’ protest movements, wrote about the injustices of the caste system in his Gulamgiri (1871). In the twentieth century, B.R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker in Madras, better known as Periyar, wrote powerfully on caste and their writings were read by people all over India. Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, wrote and published "Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal" in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation. The poems of another Kanpur millworker, who wrote under the name of Sudarshan Chakr between 1935 and 1955, were brought together and published in a collection called "Sacchi Kavitayan". Local protest movements and sects also created a lot of popular journals and tracts criticising ancient scriptures and envisioning a new and just future. Social reformers tried to restrict excessive drinking among them, to bring literacy and, sometimes, to propagate the message of nationalism through their writings.