The role of books in the promotion of learning and culture can hardly be over emphasised especially at a time when reading-culture is under threat from several negative forces in contemporary society that seek to cripple all moves towards real literature and knowledge. The publishing scene in India that seems to apparently be looking up with about 80,000 books being brought out every year by more than 15,000 publishing houses and a readership of 600 million according to available statistics, however, conceals a lot of unevenness when we look at the specifics.
There are some languages where book production and reading are extremely poor: Konkani, Sindhi, Rajastani, Maithili, Dogri, Kashmiri, Bodo, Santhali, Tulu, Bhojpuri, Pahari and culturally-rich tribal languages like Gondi, Mundari, Mizo, Khasi, Tynedie, Garo and Bhili are some of the languages. There is also huge unevenness in terms of gender, class, race and caste. These gaps between the privileged and the underprivileged are apparent also in the literacy rates in India. It is evident that women, tribals, Dalits and the economically backward have lesser access to books than their privileged counterparts. There is unevenness also in the genres of books produced. There are far fewer books in social sciences, pure and nascent sciences, studies in theatre, cinema, plastic arts, architecture and folk culture and women’s studies etc than works of popular fiction and computer science primers. There are few attempts to develop new discourses in the languages for fear of lexical inadequacy: this is a kind of double-bind as vocabulary can develop only out of writing practice. Translation activity between Indian languages and between Indian and foreign languages also shows grave unevenness due to reasons like cultural closure, lack of multilingual competence and absence of lexical tools.
The crisis is further deepened by the unfortunate circumstances in which most of the authors and translators work. Lack of incentives, absence of a proper monitoring mechanism for copyrights and royalties, poor remuneration for translators and their general invisibility, exploitation of guileless authors by manipulative publishers, even the absence of an appreciative readership in certain languages and genres: all these are likely to put off even the most committed and enterprising of writers/translators.
The career-driven and often soullessly technical education driven by the market-economy that ignores the overall development of the personality of its trainees has also led to a decline in general reading among the young. The state of school and college libraries in India is far from commendable as little money is allocated to them.
Bookshops in the smaller towns too now seem to be giving way to more profitable enterprises. E-commerce in books, online purchase and Internet reading are yet to reach the people in rural areas and even mofussil towns. The culture industry that promotes genres that make little demand on the intellect and the general apathy to objective knowledge promoted by the fundamentalist religious ideologies have all contributed to the decline in serious reading. Public sector undertakings in the area need to view this crisis as a great opportunity and challenge and make quality books available to the people in smaller places at affordable prices as also organise exhibitions and book festivals to promote serious reading culture.