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.
  

Return to blogging...

It is now May 2008, a full 3 months since my last blog entry. A combination of limited Internet connectivity, extensive traveling, and lack of motivation all conspired to limit my blogging productivity. I resolve now to get back to task and finish chronicling my recent Indian journey. I look forward to reflecting upon some of my more insightful discoveries....

Bangalore, Part II

I’ve spent over 4 weeks in India now, and am slowly recovering from a bad cold/sinus infection. This normally happens to me after spending a few weeks in-country – my immune system usually gets compromised due to the traveling, pollution, and weather. Getting sick is never fun, but it’s even less fun when you’re on your own, traveling on the road. At any rate, I’m on the path to recovery. It’s been a little while since my last blog entry, and there’s a lot I need to report on.

I arrived in Delhi from Bangalore on Sunday, Feb 3. My first reaction upon landing was the change of weather – a dim sky and cool breeze greeted me when I left the airport. But more about Delhi later. I need to reflect more on my last week in Bangalore, which was fairly eventful.

Indian Institute of Science (IISc)

On Monday, January 28, I had an afternoon meeting with Dr. S. Venkadesan, the director of the Indian Institute of Science’s (IISc) library. The institute is one of the top science universities in the country, and its library is considered to be one of the better ones in India. While he does not work in a public library, we discussed how the state of public libraries in India is fairly poor. Dr. Venkadesan observed that LIS programs in India may not be graduating enough well qualified people, and he remarked that library and information science is not a very highly regarded profession in India. With LIS often a “last resort” for some students, it is not surprising that the quality of LIS graduates in India may be low.

On another note, we had a discussion about the effectiveness of government in India – for a various set of reasons, it appears that centrally-funded initiatives in India (e.g., high level science, technology, etc.) are more efficiently run than state-funded ones. Thus, centrally-funded universities such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and IISc can run fairly smoothly without much detailed government oversight, while state-run projects, from primary education to road building, can face many bureaucratic and logistical tangles. He brought out the example of a request for funding – if someone asks for money to support a cyclotron project, most of the potential funders will not have the requisite knowledge to properly question this request. While funding could be denied, a fascination with the “high-tech” and complex nature of this project (in addition to the ignorance of the potential funders) would make it a project that would get funded and developed without much government interference. However, with the case of a more “mundane” request like the funding of a library, more administrators and funders who think they know what a library is and how it should run (despite the fact that they most likely do not and are not aware of the professional skills needed to run one) will feel more of an urge to micro-manage and control this type of project. Governance issues, particularly at the state level, remain key to the development and revitalization of public libraries in India. Implementation at the state and village levels is so crucial for public libraries in India, but if politics, micro-management, and corruption rear their ugly heads, then all the lofty ideals of public library revitalization may be sadly tarnished.

Rural Library Visit

After my visit with the Karnataka Public Library Director, Dr. Rajendra Kumar, I was put in touch with a district officer for rural libraries, Mr. K.G. Venkatesh. He called me and set up a day to take me on a visit to some rural libraries in Bangalore district. Mr. Venkatesh came to my uncle’s house on the morning of Tuesday, January 29 in an old Karnataka state government jeep. We went south on Kanakpura Rd. in Bangalore, heading out of the city. Since I did not have a lot of time to make visits to areas that were “deep” in the rural hinterland of Karnataka state, we had to settle on visiting a couple of villages that were fairly close to the city of Bangalore, within the limits of Bangalore district. Despite that fact that Bangalore is a city of over 6 million people, bona fide villages with dirt roads are close by.

The first village we reached was named Talaghattapura, about a half hour’s drive from Bangalore. Located on a dirt road directly off Kanakpura Rd., the library I saw in this village is a “model library” built by the state a year ago in cooperation with the village. This library serves about five villages in the surrounding area, and the land has been donated by the panchayat (a type of rural governing organization in India).

What immediately struck me about this building was its bright colors – the library is bathed in neon green, bright yellow, and orange. It is surrounded by a wall, with a garden in its courtyard, and the interior courtyard walls have sayings from various Indian luminaries (in Kannada) about the importance and value of reading and books. The actual library, aside from the large garden courtyard, consists of a reading room and a small side room with books, most in Kannada and with a few in English. On the upper walls of the reading room are framed photos of various great individuals in Indian history. The library appeared to be well-used, with a number of people (mostly men) sitting in the reading room, browsing through newspapers. I saw some women gathered around the building, and met the person in charge of the library, a young man most likely in his late 20’s or early 30’s. For most of these village and rural libraries, the person running the library is usually a part-time volunteer with another job that supports him/her. This particular library is open from 9 – 12 AM, and from 3 – 6 PM.

My appearance also seemed to have been quite anticipated in the village. I saw a photographer show up and take photos of the readers in the library, and thought this was part of some publicity for the library, since it was a new “model” library for the state to show off. However, I soon learned that the extra people at the library and the photographer were there for me, the visitor from America. Apparently the public library director for the state had told all his staff about me, and they were prepared for my arrival. The photo-ops then began in full earnest – photos of me with the library staff, the district officer, kids from the village, random people, etc. While I must have posed for about 10 of these types of photos, it was endearing. It was nice to feel the affection of these people from the village, and the pride they seemed to have in the library was evident. One old man, probably in his 80s, talked to the district officer Mr. Venkatesh and me for several minutes about his time as a headmaster of the school in the village, and how he became the headmaster even with only an education up to the seventh standard. Seeing the warmth and affection of these people really made it come home to me about why I am interested in this work. I feel deep down in my gut that India’s development issues have to be really be dealt with at the rural level, and Mr. Venkatesh also emphasized to me that India’s rural library sector needs to be transformed for real results to be seen. Despite the burgeoning cities, India still has a majority rural population base. Being in this village also reminded me about how just a few generations ago my ancestors were living in villages just like this one, and how rewarding it would be to give back to the rural places that have given my family and culture so much.

Overall, I was happy to see this model library, and was impressed by its beauty and cleanliness, and the pride the people took in it. However, I knew this was an exception to the rule, and the next village library I visited in Somanahally (a few kilometers south of Tallaghattapura) reminded me of this fact. This library was in a rented commerical space, and had one librarian, a Ms. Gundamaddama, in charge of it. I did not see anyone patronizing the library, and both the collection and the building itself looked old and in need of refurbishing. The small crowd that developed later at the library seemed to be more interested in my and the district officer’s visit. As a more “typical” rural library in Bangalore district, it illustrated the great challenges that rural libraries face in being relevant, lively centres of information access for their populations. Is the Talaghattapura library a model for other rural libraries in Karnataka to follow? Perhaps this is a question to animate further work….