A reading retreat for the lower middle class in Delhi
Seema Chandravanshi has been preparing to crack the Civil Services examination for about two years. A resident of Yamuna Vihar in north-east Delhi, she takes a metro trip to Chandni Chowk every morning to reach Hardayal Municipal Heritage Public Library where she uses the reading room and the library facility.
Later in the afternoon, she takes another metro trip to Karol Bagh in Central Delhi to attend coaching classes.
Like her, thousands of young people across the national capital region, who are preparing to take various competitive examinations that will get them employment do something similar — travel several km from their homes to public libraries to spend a good part of the day studying, without too many distractions.
Some users at the bigger libraries such as Delhi Public Library and Hardayal Municipal Heritage Public Library, both located a few metres from the Chandni Chowk metro station, travel from places outside Delhi. Majority of the youth using public libraries live in small homes in crowded neighbourhoods that lack the ambience to concentrate on books, a consequence of unplanned urbanisation and migration to big cities.
Reinventing the wheel
Public libraries in Delhi, many of which have been through rough times over the last decade or so as book readership declined with a rise in internet and computer access, are now seeing a future for themselves in catering to the increasing need among youth for a place to study. Libraries too want to play a part in helping them fulfil their aspirations for a bright career, says Rekha Sinha, North Delhi Municipal Corporation councillor who, as member-secretary, is responsible for steering the chain of Hardayal libraries to better times.
And so, they are sprucing up their reading rooms with better lighting and furniture, increasing seating capacity and attempting to provide more comfort. Users of reading rooms are allowed to take their own books into the premises to study and are not under any obligation to use the library’s collection.
The Delhi Public Library, which has the largest network of libraries in Delhi, 37 in all including a braille library and fleet of 100 mobile libraries, has even created a separate entrance at many of its branches for those who want to access only the reading room.
Dayal Singh Public Library, located very close to the ITO metro station as well as in the vicinity of many educational and government institutions, too found that creating a 40-seat reading room has helped bring in more users and enrol more members, particularly students, over the past three years, says library-in-charge Pankaj Singh. The number of users of its library and reading rooms has climbed to about 150 a day from 60-70 a day some three years ago. At Hardayal Municipal Heritage Public Library too there’s an attempt to make reading rooms more comfortable. Measures are also being taken to attract more members for the core library service and increase books circulation.
The Delhi Public Library has earmarked a separate area for senior citizens to spend a few hours reading, revamping children’s corner with books, DVDs and activities, explains its chairman, Ram Sharan Gaur. As a result, the libraries look a lot more inviting than they did a few years ago and the membership has been climbing. At two of its new libraries, a separate section has been earmarked
for women and girls.
Hardayal Municipal Library too has plans to renovate and refurbish its libraries. The renovation work at Chandni Chowk is expected to begin by the end of February, says Sinha. The library is housed in a heritage building, built in 1916. It is also Delhi’s oldest public library and holds some rare books such as the 1634 edition of Thomas Herbert’s A Relation of Some Yeares Travaile, a 1677 edition of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World, a handwritten copy of Bhagavata Mahapurana (from the early 1800s), a Persian version of the Mahabharata written by Abul Raizi and Ayats of Quran written by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb with its Hindi translation.
But upgrading libraries to make them more relevant for the users often faces a funding hurdle, unless there are generous grants from governments or other donors. That’s, however, one worry the Delhi Public Library, being an autonomous body under the union ministry of culture, does not have. The library has seen its funding through grants-in-aid from the Centre more than double from ₹18.5 crore in 2013-14 to ₹38 crore in 2018-19.
But the Hardayal Municipal Public Library that depends on Delhi’s municipal corporations for funds is facing a crisis. It has received about ₹3.20 crore in grants so far this year to stay afloat as it did in the last two years, from the four municipal corporations of Delhi. Its funding has seen very little change over the past 10 years when it was getting about ₹3 crore. The money is not enough to pay for the salaries of its employees and for amenities such as electricity and small repairs across its network of 24 branch libraries. As a result, the Chandni Chowk library had to go without power for several weeks in the past. Salaries are often delayed, sometimes for months.
The library is not even computerised and digitised, so all records are on paper. That will change only when the renovation process gets going — for which the library had got a grant of ₹3 crore approved by the Delhi’s lieutenant governor way back in 2016. About ₹1.80 crore of that fund had been released to Delhi Development Authority to get the renovation started but the process got stuck at the drawing board.
Dayal Singh Public Library is run by a trust and so relies on it to provide adequate funds. The trust
earns much of its income as rental income from letting out space in the library building. While the library faces no crisis as such, its ambience can be more inviting, given its vast collection of old books that can be referred in the library or even circulated.
The funds crisis at Hardayal Municipal libraries meant that new book acquisitions have not happened for some 10 years. The library has about 1.7 lakh books with multiple copies of some. Dayal Singh library adds books worth ₹5 lakh annually to its collection that currently stands at about 43,000 books, mostly in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu across various topics as also fictions. Delhi Public Library adds about 40,000 books annually (about 25,000 titles) to its vast collection of about 18 lakh. Significantly, given the profile of users of these libraries, books meant to help preparations for competitive exams are among the top purchases at the Delhi Public Library as well as Dayal Singh Public Library. The requisition is done at the branch level.
The new-reader challenge
The next challenge for the public libraries is to attract more young readers. Dayal Singh Public Library had started a children’s section next to the reading room but it found few takers, says a disappointed Singh.
But Delhi Public Library’s Gaur claims that the children sections are gaining popularity. The central library at Chandni Chowk has been organising many programmes for children to get them attracted to reading. It has also brought in about 1,110 children from economically weaker sections and orphanages into the library in batches between December and January to introduce them to books and create an interest in reading by engaging them in various activities such as drawing competitions and poster making, singing, poetry recitation and so on.
But getting children as young as 4-6 years interested in books takes a lot more effort than just contests and library tours, particularly when learning outcomes in government-run schools as well as rural schools are disappointing, as reported by Pratham’s ASER reports year after year. It requires regular engagement with the child with story-telling and read aloud sessions, gradual introduction to the world of books and providing incentives and rewards, especially to the first-time learners. The Community Library Project, which runs one such public library in Sheikh Sarai in South Delhi at Ramditti J R Narang Deepalaya Learning Centre, could provide just the template required to inculcate a habit of reading in the young.
Schools sans libraries
Children’s writer, editor and communications trainer Sandhya Rao observes: “Left in the hands of government agencies, libraries run on a prescriptive basis — they generally stock books that either nobody reads or just popular titles. There’s no variety. The fact is, at least in Chennai, there are so many schools that don’t have libraries. They don't seem to think that’s important. And many that do, hardly ever allow children to borrow whatever they want: they will simply unlock those cupboards with books that they think a certain group of children should read.
Very often, librarians themselves don’t read. Of course, there’s this other thing: they will not buy ‘expensive’ books. Like there can ever be a price on reading and reading material!”
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