A dedicated department is needed to implement the new library policy
Yesterday, the Goa cabinet, headed by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, approved the Goa State Library Policy, 2024, aimed at setting up a robust network of digital and physical libraries across the state and encouraging reading habits.
The draft of the Goa Library Policy, prepared by a committee headed by scientist Nandkumar Kamat, was submitted to the state government in January 2024. No one knows why a government which, at public platforms, talks of empowering students, encouraging a scientific bent of mind, besides reading habits, took nearly two-and-a-half years to bring the policy before the cabinet.
The policy drafting committee’s work began in January 2019. It was initiated by then chief minister Manohar Parrikar, though he was not well. He wanted Goa to have a library policy that would be the best in the country. An IITian, Parrikar was a man who knew that a society that reads thinks better, governs better and lives with greater dignity. Sawant, who succeeded Parrikar in March the same year, provided consistent support to the Directorate of Art and Culture and to the committee through the pandemic and beyond. The policy is to run for 10 years, until 2034.
Goa is the first Indian state to formally adopt the IFLA-UNESCO Public Library Manifesto, 2022, within a state policy.
The policy covers infrastructure standards, staffing requirements, technology adoption, digital services, green and eco-friendly practices, e-book subscriptions, digital platforms for borrowing and research, centralised digital repositories, AI-powered catalogues, augmented and virtual reality tools for learning and community engagement programmes. It also mandates mobile libraries to reach villages and ward-level student study centres for young people who have nowhere quiet to sit and prepare for examinations.
The policy includes some new concepts. There is Granthagram – a book village on the lines of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, Redu in Belgium or Bhilar in Maharashtra, which is India’s first and currently the only book village. It also proposes a single, comprehensive, publicly accessible repository for everything ever written about Goa or produced in Goa – books, manuscripts, rare periodicals, maps, oral history recordings, audiovisual materials, documentation of the freedom struggle, records of the Portuguese colonial period, traditional knowledge systems and more.
One section in the policy addresses senior citizens, differently-abled persons, homemakers, migrant workers and tourists as distinct groups with distinct needs. It includes digital literacy programmes specifically designed for those who have been left behind by the technology transition. Another section addresses library facilities specifically for Scheduled Tribe communities in Goa’s interior and forested areas, where access to any kind of knowledge infrastructure is extremely limited.
Goa’s library legislation was passed in 1993, and an amendment to fund village libraries was brought in 2018. Goa has been slow in taking major steps to rebuild the library movement, which has been seen in states such as Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. The central government has been encouraging states to carry out modernisation of libraries under the National Mission on Libraries (NML).
Currently, Goa faces a lack of reading habits. The futuristic library policy has the potential to bring changes in the state by way of new modern libraries, library management, e-libraries and mobile libraries, and in developing a mindset that will help people think and grow in their careers. The government must start implementing the policy at the earliest for a progressive Goa. A dedicated department for library services will go a long way in putting the library movement – a need of the hour – back on track.
