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
