Friday, November 29, 2019

Why no one values public libraries in India


Why no one values public libraries in India

A library is a public space. Some libraries are more public than others – they are open to anyone who wishes to become a member. While some other libraries are less so, open to members of the institutions they may be attached to, whether schools, universities, clubs or specialised groups.

Even as libraries, especially of the former kind that were few to begin with, dwindle, their existence continues to form a function that many find odd, even wasteful. The Max Müller Goethe-Institut Library on Kasturba Gandhi Marg in Delhi, for instance, that I visit from time to time has wonderful books. But I also go there to find a quiet, calming space.

At the Max Müller library, I find many students of German language classes poring over their textbooks as study groups. To anyone looking in from outside the library’s big, bay windows, I could strike as an anomaly. Even when I do sit with a book taken down from the shelves, the empirically-minded may very well wonder what a non-language student is doing there. And when I’m on my laptop, usually editing some copy that has nothing to do with anything in my immediate surroundings, they could even think that I’m a ‘wasteful’ member of the library. ‘Why is he there wasting precious air-conditioning, and occupying a seat that could have been utilised by someone more interested in mastering German transitive verbs, or planning to pursue studies in a German university?’

Once upon a time, the British Council Library in Kolkata that I literally grew up inside, was not just a repository of books, but also the place where you could get a spot of air-conditioning in the humid summer heat, meet your boyfriend, girlfriend outside the prying eyes in pleasant temperature conditions and clean washrooms closeby – the shopping malls of the times, I suppose — watch videos on VHS or CD; flirt with your eyes with fellow members with whom you’d never find yourself sharing any other space except this, and where you could even nod off on a nice, plump sofa.

Sustaining these few public spaces of comfort – both related to reading and otherwise – of course, is expensive. Which is why the few libraries that exist today in most Indian cities are heavily subsidised, or, like the Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Memorial Society Library at Delhi’s Chittaranjan Park, live on a sustenance diet. And each library that shuts or shrinks decreases the unique space that still exists in these times of e-books, online-purchased books and, yes, that other sanctuary for lovers of all kinds, shopping malls.

And yet, those who find most sense in libraries becoming more exclusive — attached only to educational institutions or clubs or some such establishment not open to the public at large — are the ones who probably value their worth the least. Either because they are unable to understand what function beyond the reading, bookish, educational ones they serve, or because they don’t really value even such matters, they find the phenomenon of people not using libraries ‘purely’ to ‘gather knowledge’, wasteful. And that for some, using libraries as many of us once did, as imaginary or real ‘dating’ venues, or even to steal books by tucking them into our trouser fronts (in those pre-bar code scanning days), was reason enough to shut down these ‘dens of vice’.

Proposals, therefore, have sprouted forth, mostly in internal budget meetings of cultural centres and institutions, about the need to make libraries more exclusive to people who are ‘worthy’ – that is, readers and readers alone.

Explanations are given that those who are genuinely interested in using libraries for reading and borrowing books – and to pursue higher studies in the countries affiliated to the libraries of cultural centres of foreign countries — will make the effort to pay higher membership fees. That, these folks hope, will ‘keep out’ the ‘uninterested’ and downright ‘deviant’ members who are more bent on using libraries as cheap public utilities (read: subsidised air-conditioned space, toilets, canteen, rendezvous spots, napping corners, computer stations, photocopying facilities etc).

As a result, many library members using it ‘genuinely’ for the access to books the library provides, may find it daunting to continue as a member. Of course, many non-library members will find it impossible to gauge any value in the many ‘wasteful’ activities (including indulging in erotic safaris from their air-conditioned seats), gaining little else than a ‘different kind of lifestyle experience’ than that which exists outside libraries. The waste of tax payers’ money – in this context, money that these institutions could spend more wisely on other ‘more productive things’ like, say, a skilling centre or expanding language courses – becomes the dominant message.

Despondent library members in this country, of course, don’t make news. Their cause is far less noble than those, say, pursuing education. People ‘lazing away’ in libraries are seen as an affront to hardworking readers – who must be students or scholars, because who else reads in libraries for pleasure?

But they don’t protest, go on traffic snarls-creating marches, get clobbered for demanding more affordable public libraries in a country that still needs to provide basic requirements to millions like ours. These library members simply drop off as members, most coming around to believing that, yes indeed, libraries are a waste of resources in a country as resource-strapped as India. Libraries, anyway seen traditionally as ‘elite’ spaces and viewed increasingly more as entities suited only to ‘entitled western culture’, are given the quiet heave-ho.

Therefore, proving matters beyond doubt that no one values public libraries in this country.


Regards

Mr. Pralhad Jadhav 
Master of Library & Information Science (NET Qualified) 
Senior Manager @ Knowledge Repository  
Khaitan & Co 
Twitter Handle | @Pralhad161978

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