New Delhi: A right to information query has revealed that in Madhya Pradesh, there is only one public library per 17 lakh people – far lower than the national average of one per 30,000 people, the Times of India reported.
The Raja Ram Mohan Roy Library Foundation, which operated under the Ministry of Culture, told RTI activist Chandrashekhar Gaur that “As per the information provided by the states and Union territories, there are only 46,746 public libraries in all over the country”.
Maharashtra has the most number of public libraries, at 12,191, and Kerala comes in second with 8,415. Despite being a very large state, Madhya Pradesh has only 42 public libraries. “The state government should take the issue of building new public libraries on a priority basis. There should be public libraries even at the tehsil level,” Gaur told ToI.
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Even when public libraries do exist, their standards aren’t always the best. A recent IANS report pointed out that not only does Uttar Pradesh have very few libraries, the money spent on them is too low for them to be updated and maintained well. Of the Rs 22 crore the UP government spends on libraries annually, Rs 20 crore goes for salaries and maintenance. This leaves only Rs 2 crore for outreach and new books.
While several Indian states have Acts about public libraries, there is no uniform country-wide system to manage them. As IndiaSpend has reported, “Public libraries are run by state governments using taxes from local administrative bodies, such as city corporations or village councils. Of India’s 29 states and seven union territories, 19 states have passed state library legislation, of which only five have the provision of a library cess or tax levy.”