[ S. Mundayoor ]

As another National Reading Day dawns in Arunachal, it is only with a mixed feeling of joy and sadness that one realises that we are completing seven decades of public libraries in the state, dreaming of seeing a reading Arunachal.

It was during 1956-57, as a part of establishing civil administration in NEFA, a string of district and sub divisional libraries were set up in towns like Pasighat, Tezu, Aalo ( thenAlong), Ziro and Khonsa, followed by other towns. In the decades that followed, these libraries became a centre of intellectual relaxation and connection to the outside world of ideas for the officers, staff and teachers in the neighbourhood. Manned by reader-centric staff, the libraries also extended a silent but strong support to the Govt schools in the state, to build a cadre of reading Arunachali youth. It was these youth who then went on to become the earlier generations of officers, doctors, engineers, teachers and leaders.  The arrival of organisations like Sri Ramakrishna Mission, Sarada Mission, and Vivekananda Kendra who opened a string of residential schools across Arunachal equipped with excellent libraries gave another impetus to the reading culture in the state. The dedicated teachers in these schools stressed on students imbibing strong reading skills, further contributed to evolving a few more generations of reading-empowered Arunachali youth. It was a common sight during vacations even in remote villages in early 80s, to see youth in chang ghars, sitting with a pile of library books! This writer could remember well seeing many Arunachali youth in the district libraries those days.

Sadly, these have receded into half-forgotten memories, since the arrival of the new century and new interventions in the lives of the common people of the state – VCP, TV, mobile, internet and today several modes of social media. A central plan to spread education to remote areas across India, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, has strangely led to a steep fall in educational standards and reading skills in rural Arunachal across Govt schools. The result: a proliferation of private schools (Niti Ayog 2026 Report on School Education System) and private hostels, both under no administrative control of the Education Dept or the state Govt. The victim is the hapless Arunachal student who is yoked to private tuitions, thereby depriving him/ her of any free time for hobbies, much less the joy of reading library books. Hence the present neglected state of our once widely-popular public libraries.

On this National Reading Day, it will be worthwhile to pause a minute to think of some fundamental conditions in our state that acts as a hurdle to promotion of reading habit among people:

1. Currently reading promotion is almost wholly left to the state-run public libraries, functioning in district HQs and a few small towns. Our state has only a handful of community-managed libraries, most of them recently set up. Twoexceptions are Garuk Thuk Library in Shergaon and the libraries under the Lohit Youth Library Network which has been functioning in Lohit-Dibang region for the last 19 years. As against this, Kerala with just 14 districts, has around 9500 community-run libraries and reading rooms. Every village has one or more, all managed by the local people.
2. Most of our rural Arunachali population are outside the coverage of state-run public libraries.
3. Adverse geographical conditions and scattered population puts great hurdles on govt libraries to reaching out to distant villages outside their limited zones.
4. Timings and services of Govt libraries do not facilitate and attract the public. Students, who constitute the major reading group in Arunachal too are unable to come to a govt.library regularly after school hours and hence to get valuable reading exposure. Whereas, community-run libraries, like Bamboosa Library open only in the afternoons, to suit the needs of the local population.
5. Currently, libraries in Arunachal have books only in the main Indian languages. Books in Arunachali languages have not been available for the common people, due to the long delay in finalising a standard script for each language. This restricts only a small population of the state to benefit from a public library. Educated members of the community alone can fill this void. By committing themselves and encouraging others to create locally appropriate reading materials in our own mother languages.

Aka Language Academy has set us a role model by bringing out a range of attractive books for community members.  Copyright-free Pratham Books can be an excellent source for preparing free translations in our own languages.

6. In mainland India, libraries and reading-rooms run by the community/ NGOs are legal entities and get affiliation from the State Library Council. Unfortunately, not in Arunachal till now. Hence in the absence of a proper status, a community library does not get the official & public recognition in the state. It is time Arunachal Govt too starts pro-active measures to attract more NGOs and community leaders like the Panchayats to invest their resources, time and energies to set up libraries & reading rooms across rural Arunachal.

What are these remedial measures to bring Arunachal back to a reading society?  We shall discuss some of these in the next article.

(To be continued. The writer is an educational and reading promotion activist, with over 45 years of experience with Arunachali youths, and the coordinator of the Lohit Youth Library Network.)