LIBRARIES IN VILLAGES

the only village to have set up a library—in fact, a rural library movement is sweeping across the country. In the past year alone, about 100 libraries with sleek, air-conditioned reading rooms have come up in the villages of Noida, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Bulandshahr, among others as part of Gram Pathshala, a community initiative led by youngsters in these villages. It started last year when a few students in the village approached Lal Bahar, an inspector with National Human Rights Commission, who lives in Ganauli village in Ghaziabad, complaining of a lack of a place to study

“I took up the matter with the villagers and the Gram Pradhan and suggested that we should open a library in the village. Everyone immediately agreed. We collected 5 lakh rupees through donations from villagers and the library was opened in August last year,” says Lal Bahar.

A month later, Bahar started reaching out to neighbouring villages to encourage them to build similar libraries. The villagers responded with great enthusiasm, and a brand-new library has since been inaugurated in one or the other village of these districts almost every week in Panchayat buildings, which had been out of use for years. On Sunday, Bahar attended the inauguration of the 100th such library in the region, which came up in Kailashpur village in Greater Noida in Gautam Buddh Nagar district.

“Our mission is to open a library in every village of the country, and make Gautam Buddh Nagar the first district to have a library in every village,” says Bahar. “The villagers contribute anything between Rs 100 to 20, 000 to set up the library. We only provide encouragement and advice. Now we are getting enquiries from villages in Bihar, Assam and Rajasthan and many other states,” adds Ajay Pal Nagar, who is part of the core team of Gram Pathshala initiative.

A few km away from Kalda village is Koodi Kheda, another village, where about a dozen students are reading inside the library, which was inaugurated in February this year. Like the one in Kalda, this one is also located in the verdant surrounding of Panchayat Ghar, which was renovated for the library.

The rustle of the trees is the only sound one hears inside its high-ceilinged reading room, whose walls are adorned with framed posters of national leaders, and many inspiring slogans, one of which reads, “When in doubt, come to the library”.

“We decided to set up the library after the Gram Pathshala team approached our village and told us about their mission. Almost everyone in the village lapped up the idea,” says Arun Nagar, who is part of the village team that manages the library.

Sunny Kumar, who is at the library preparing for the SSC GD examination for paramilitary services, adds, “I had no place to study at home. Lack of libraries and a place to study put students in villages at a great disadvantage. I am happy it is no longer the case in our village.”

Indeed, these community efforts are important in a country like India where per capita expenditure on libraries is among the lowest in the world. The US, for example, spends, 35.96 dollars per capita annually on public libraries, but in India it is a meagre 7 paise.

According to the 2011 Census, there were 70,817 libraries in rural areas and 4,580 in urban areas serving a population of more than 830 million and 370 million, respectively.

While libraries were part of the Census for the first time in 2011, there was no precise infor