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Learning lunch with founders of The Community Library Project

Spending months poring over the pages of a book as it gets created can sometimes make it easy for us to forget what drew us towards the publishing industry in the first place. The thing to remember is we all started as readers, as a bunch of people who love books. The learning lunch interaction with Mridula Koshy and Michael Creighton, founders of The Community Library Project (TCLP) which DK India supports, was perhaps the perfect way to be reminded of ourselves as readers. As part of DK India’s ongoing celebration of its 25th year, Mridula and Michael gave an insight into the workings of TCLP, its mission, and most importantly, the people this project serves.

In the course of the conversation, attended by DK India employees both in person and virtually, Mridula painted a picture that was equally heartwarming and heart-rending. It was unbelievable that in a country with probably the highest readership in the world, there is no national policy on libraries. It was also shocking that for a city of over 30 million, the number of libraries was less than 50. And the number of libraries that do not charge membership fees? Only three, all of which are part of TCLP. 

It was also a rude awakening of sorts when Michael shared that while children in countries like the US read around 2–5 million words in a year, our numbers are not even close to 500,000. He attributed it to the fallacy of our education system, which places more emphasis on children reading their text books than other books. He talked about how, in his experience, people who read more usually add more value to society in general and can think more rationally. This tied in well with the point Mridula underscored a few times – Human beings are supposed to think. If we are not thinking, then what purpose are we serving? And if we are not reading, then how can we think? Michael called the ability to read “a superpower”. This, in an age where books are often mere afterthoughts, highlighted the impact we, as part of the publishing industry, make on impressionable minds. 

During the talk, we started realizing that while for people like us on the inside, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and we often ponder over ways to make our books more useful for readers, sometimes we should just be prompted and motivated by the unbridled joy our books bring to our readers. That and nothing else. 

Mridula shared a heartwarming incident of a group of children, who – extremely concerned by the ISRO rocket getting stuck on another planet – rushed into the library to read DK books, to find a solution! She referred to DK “as a friend when things get terribly lonely out there”. That sort of validation from our young readers made us feel “awarded” in the true sense and extremely proud to be part of the India chapter which has been around for 25 years now.

The eye-opening and interactive session came to a fitting end with Geeta Bajaj, HR Head of DK India, announcing a programme where DK employees can volunteer to help out in the TCLP libraries. And who is to say, when we celebrate our 50th year, we wouldn’t have left our footprints on a distant planet, through the curious minds we have helped to shape with our books? 


Abhijit Dutta
Project editor, Knowledge