India Research Trip: January to March 2010

Exploring the “Public Good” and “Public Sphere” in India through Public Libraries

My sporadic blogging continues. I am back in India again, having arrived on 14 January 2010. I plan to stay here until the middle of March. While the focus of the research remains public and community libraries, concepts such as the public sphere, public good, civic rights, and infrastructure have crept into my thinking about the topic. I have had a number of interesting conversations with various people on this research trip so far - activists from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academic researchers, and government bureaucrats. Despite the interest that my project has been generating in certain circles, I still face a good deal of skepticism from a number of Indian lay people about this research agenda. I just jotted some thoughts down here as a way to begin fleshing out my response to these skeptics. Here it goes:

The case for improved public and community libraries in India on the surface appears to be a concern limited to providing more access to books and encouraging literacy amongst the masses. On one level, this basic understanding is true. Public libraries in India, while uneven in their development, have played roles in promoting literacy and the habit of reading. This conception of public libraries was adequate up to a certain time, but in light of the technological changes of the last few decades, it remains an outdated concept. This is especially true given the changes in India’s socio-economic climate over the last several years.

A limited conception of public libraries as book depositories circumscribes their possibilities for promoting social change. In a country such as India with so many inequalities and other legitimate infrastructural needs (e.g., increased access to potable water, improved roads, etc.), the case for improved public libraries can seem like a luxury at best and a superfluous wish at worst. However, it is important to envision the roles that a renewed public library system in India might play in the promotion of the public good and the public sphere.

A more expansive conception of public libraries as community information centers is one way to increase the relevance of these institutions for public and civic life. This conception is not new - numerous examples exist around the world of public libraries serving communities through the supplying of information related to health, employment, and recreational needs. Perhaps even more importantly, the library can act as a physical hub of civic activity in Indian cities (and rural areas as well) - a public space for the promotion of public culture. The dearth of free, open, and non-purposive spaces in Indian cities is a major issue; revitalized public and community libraries can alleviate this problem to some degree.

I am hoping that my highlighting of these issues will slowly build awareness of the possibilities of improved public libraries in India. I am realistic and understand that this goal may turn out not to be feasible. However, an action research agenda takes time. Providing frameworks for change is the best I can do; effecting real change on the ground is the task of local stakeholders. Keeping these basic facts in mind helps motivate me to keep plugging away, one day at a time.

Research Grant!

Thus far my field research on Indian public libraries has been fueled by a couple of small internal grants from the University of Western Ontario. I used up these grant monies by December 2008 and in the meantime I had applied to a couple of large research grant competitions in the fall of 2008. International research and fieldwork is rewarding for a variety of reasons, including the opportunity to challenge oneself in different social and cultural environments as well as the ability to foster intercultural dialogues and exchanges. However, international research by its nature necessitates the procurement of grant funds, often in very large amounts.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is the largest grant providing agency in Canada for the type of work that I do and I applied to what is known as the "Standard SSHRC Grant" competition in October 2008. I spent a decent amount of time during the summer putting the grant application together, in anticipation of receiving a 3 year grant award. After a wait of several months, I found out in April 2009 that I did not receive the award. I instead received what is called a "4A" designation - SSHRC terminology for "your research is worthy and potentially fundable, but there is no money to fund it because other grant applications that were ranked higher than yours already received all the money." I was a little disappointed, but apparently receiving a 4A designation is not a bad thing and re-submitting the following year with revisions (based on reviewer comments) is recommended. The University of Western Ontario has also chipped in with some "reapplication assistance" funds for me to start the project during the 2009-10 academic year and resubmit in October 2009. So all in all, not too bad.

On the brighter side, I applied to a grant competition internal to UWO in November 2008 known as the Academic Development Fund (ADF) Major Grant and found out in late April 2009 that I received the grant. This grant provides signficant monetary support to research projects for a one year period, with an extension for another year. I requested funds to begin fieldwork studying the roles public libraries in India can play with regard to community information provision and was lucky enough to receive my whole request. I am excited to begin this project and am planning to base my case study research in and around the Bangalore region. A lot of this summer will be spent with planning the fieldwork, submitting my research ethics application (needed to even get the grant money released to me), conducting more literature reviews, getting in touch with Indian contacts, and figuring out how to allocate work for student research assistants. I am also trying to teach myself some basic Kannada reading and writing, so when fieldwork begins in January 2010, I'll at least be able to have a functional literacy in the language. With research grants come more responsibilities, but I'm not complaining...

India trip, January - February 2009

I followed up my research trip to India from January to March 2008 with a return trip to the country from January 15 to February 24, 2009.  The previous trip was my first experience doing actual field work in India, as I interviewed members from the library working group of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC).  This group had given a set of recommendations for the improvement of India's library systems and my interviews allowed me to better understand the dimensions and trajectories of India's library revitalization movement.

The trip generated some ideas about possible future research steps.  One aspect of the NKC recommendations was a focus on making libraries more effective "community-based information systems."  This concept was also echoed in many of the statements of my interviewees.  While this concept had some consensus, it remained fairly vague and general.  In an effort to explore this concept further, I have proposed doing a case study within the Bangalore region.  This case study would assess the community information service models of particular libraries in this region and would provide some insights into the roles of the state and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the development of public and community libraries.   The role of public and community libraries in social development in India is relatively unexplored; part of this project would probe this area further, as well as potential links between a new library movement and wider social movements in the country.  I have applied for a couple of grants to fund the project and will find out by early April about the results.

This most recent trip to India was focused mainly on exploring the feasibility of this proposed study.  I also met some of my contacts and friends from the January - March 2008 trip.  During my stay in Bangalore, I met with some people involved with NGOs doing library development as well as democratic advocacy work.  These organizations include Dream a Dream, which focuses on after-school programs primarily for slum children; Hippocampus, which runs and develops programs for libraries, mainly in government schools and in marginalized communities; the Akshara Foundation, which also runs school and community libraries; the Infosys Foundation, the charity arm of the Infosys Corporation, a prominent business process outsourcing firm in India; and Janaagraha, a civic advocacy group pushing for more responsive local government in Bangalore.  These meetings were all productive and gave me a lot of food for thought in developing further lines of inquiry in this research study.

In addition to meetings with NGOs, I gave six talks at various conferences/seminars and research institutes.  These talks all gave me chances to reflect on my India library research, as well as on some work I have been doing that is exploring ideologies and power dynamics of the "information society."  My talks at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) in Chennai and the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) in Bangalore, in particular, were highly useful in providing feedback for the design of my study exploring the role of Indian public/community libraries in a wider social development context.  

Back on the blog...

After a long hiatus I am back to some periodic blogging about all things related to Indian public and community libraries.  More to come, stay tuned....

Arrival in Delhi

I reached Delhi the morning of Sunday, February 3rd on a non-stop flight from Bangalore. The cool and overcast weather was the first clear indication I had that I was no longer in Bangalore, where daytime temperatures were reaching the high 20's with sunny skies. In Delhi, the daytime temperatures were hovering in the low teen's and there was a dusty, smoky haziness that permeated the air.

This began the first leg of my journey on my own, without family. I have a cousin in Delhi, but since I was staying for over two weeks in the city, I didn't want to burden her and her family for such a long time. Also, I had my grant money, and needed to spend it! So, I stayed at a guesthouse in the Defence Colony neighborhood of Delhi, a fairly nice enclave made up of many retired Indian military officials. I had a taxi driver hired by the guesthouse pick me up, and it was the first time I ever landed at an airport and had someone hold up a placard with my name on it - "Dr. Ajit Pyati." That felt good.

I spent the first day feeling pretty tired, and just walked around the neighborhood. I spent some time at the Defence Colony Market, which had a few chain restaurants (Subway, etc.) and other eateries and shops. It was nice to be in a neighborhood where I could walk and get groceries and food, which was also relatively peaceful. The guesthouse had wireless Internet, and I started the process of getting in touch with my Delhi contacts. As the capital, Delhi is a center of a lot of activity, and I was looking forward to meeting the Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Mr. Lov Verma, as well as the chairwoman of the NKC Working Group on Libraries, Ms. Kalpana Dasgupta.

My trip to Delhi would prove to be fairly fruitful....

Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore

On the 1st of February, I made a visit to the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) - http://www.isec.ac.in/ - in Bangalore. This institute is a social science centre focused on various Indian development issues. ISEC has a good reputation in India, and awards PhD's in various disciplines. As I have learned during this trip, many institutes in India are where a lot of academic research takes place, and where PhD programs are located. In the Western context, we focus on the research university model - in India, many university professors often do not do much research and are primarily teachers. Scholars at these institutes are mainly responsible for doing research and supervising doctoral students, with a few seminar-style classes that they have to conduct sometimes.

My uncle, Mr. GVK Rao, had a hand in the development of the institute. He was the chief secretary (head administrative officer) in the state of Karnataka many years back, and also held a high administrative position in India's central government at one time.

He was a man of great dignity and integrity, and I have never personally known a person as universally respected as he was. I could spend many paragraphs writing about my uncle and what he meant to all of us, but I will have to save that for another time. He passed away in 2007, and his presence was greatly missed during this trip.

I mention my uncle not only because he was a great man and for his affiliation with this institute - as I will discuss, the case of my uncle also illustrates the power of "name-dropping" and affiliations in India. I visited this institute with one of my cousins who received her PhD at ISEC, and she constantly introduced me to people as "GVK Rao's nephew." In the West, we are often hesitant about name-dropping or using who we know to get us ahead. In India, on the other hand, using all the name-dropping tools and affiliations at your disposal (no matter how spurious) are utilized. Personal connections are key. Everyone is looking for an advantage and sizing people up. Who you know, who your relatives are, etc. are all key indicators of your standing and importance in society. In a society as hierarchical as India's, these connections become even more crucial.

Enough with my anthropological analyses. The reason I wanted to visit ISEC was to begin linking some public library issues in India with greater concerns about good governance, public sector transparency, and promotion of the "public good" in India. If public libraries are about government entities serving communities, then these types of issues should be discussed. From my reading of the public library environment in India, these issues are implicit but are not discussed in great detail in either policy or academic circles.

I met with Dr. Sangita, who does work on e-governance issues in India. He discussed how e-governance is more advanced in Karnataka, with respect to other states in India. Some areas in which e-governance has taken hold in the state include: 1) digitization of land records; 2) property registration and documentation; 3) e-learning; and 4) e-training. He also discussed how complaints for police and local authorities to handle are being managed by e-government tools.

While I mentioned to Dr. Sangita that public libraries can be considered to be part of larger public governance issues, I was not surprised to hear that he had not thought of the issue in these terms. However, he agreed with me that there is a logical connection - I guess it will take more work on my part to make this issue gain greater traction.

He also told me something that I found quite interesting in terms of good governance. Good governance in general, according to him (and others for that matter), involves a balanced relationship between the state, civil society, and markets. Libraries and community technology projects will not be effective without a proper relationship between these factors, as we discussed. This discussion made me think about potential partnerships between state and non-state actors in the development of India's public libraries, and the challenges that this would entail.

Dr. Sangita also mentioned to me some work that is happening with information kiosks in Karnataka. Certain "e-Seva Kendras" are being managed by the government for information dissemination, and there is a plan to develop more of these types of kiosks at the village level. How the kiosk model might be incorporated in the public library movement is a question of increasing importance to me as I continue doing this research. Since libraries also provide information, can libraries adapt to take on types of kiosk service models, or vice versa?

City Central Library, Bangalore

On January 31, 2008, I was given a tour of the central library in the south zone of Bangalore, near my uncle's house in the Jayanagar neighbourhood of the city. As I learned, the public libraries in Bangalore are divided into five zones, with this library being the largest in its particular zone. The director of this branch is a Mr. Nagesh - a gentleman originally from Haveri district in northern Karnataka state.

The library has a fairly large entry area, with a place for checking in one's bags and a central reception area. While not a particularly new building, it was clean and had several people milling about and reading books and newspapers. An upstairs area was filled with more people reading - my unscientific estimate was that most of the people patronizing the library were men. The main impression I had of the library, however, was that it was not well-lighted and felt dark in places. The stacks were upstairs and were classified according to Ranganthan's colon classification system. Several students and young people appeared to be studying for exams and doing school work on the desks adjacent to the stacks.

The early part of my visit was spent in the office of Mr. Nagesh - I drank coffee and ate biscuits with him, while he took care of some office work. Sitting in this office gave me the opportunity to observe typical Indian hierarchical office interactions - a number of obsequious workers filed into his office, with some signature or other needed on a piece of paper, which was attached to a ragged file folder. After observing this spectacle for what seemed like a long time, he eventually showed me around the library.

Some interesting points from our conversation and tour:

• 23 branches exist in the south library zone of Bangalore, as well as 120 slum libraries. What exactly a slum library entails was not clear to me.
• 1 mobile library exists in the south zone
• Mr. Nagesh claims that around 300 people per day visit the library. This number should not be difficult to ascertain - most public libraries I have noticed in India (in Bangalore, Chennai, and Delhi, for instance) have a visitor log that each patron must sign upon first entering the library
• Internet stations exist in the central library of the south zone, and have about 25 users per day, according to Mr. Nagesh. I observed a couple of people using the five or so Internet ready computers in the library during my short visit. Fees to use the Internet are 10 Rs. per hour. When I arrived, the Internet connection was down - the ISP for this library and all public libraries in Bangalore is BSNL, the government-based Internet provider. Outside of the few large public libraries in the city, most public libraries in Bangalore do not have Internet connections.
  
• Most libraries, other than the central libraries of each zone, are service stations with limited hours. For instance, I was taken to a smaller branch library in a residential section of Bangalore, which essentially was a converted bungalow. The hours for this branch and for many others like this one are 8:30 to 11:30 AM and 4 to 8 PM.
• Within this particular central zone library (and it would appear most public libraries in Bangalore) no reference librarians as such work with the public. Most of the staff with actual library degrees (BLS, MLS) do not work extensively with the public and are doing work in the back offices of the library. Library assistants (not necessarily having diplomas or degrees) are doing most of the work with the public.
  
• As with many of the libraries I have observed in major Indian cities (e.g., Bangalore and Chennai), colon classification is employed.