Reaching Fahrenheit 451

A month back, I borrowed the latest book by Anita Nair, Goodnight and God Bless, from a local library. Earlier, I had read her columns in The Sunday Express and I own a copy of her last work of fiction (Mistress), which I liked. I glanced through this small book, priced at Rs. 399, before borrowing it, and realized that the material is nothing superior to the free stuff that I get from the blogosphere. To make matters worse, on reading the book I realized that most of the pieces were from her earlier Sunday Express columns which I had already read! Strange that this was not mentioned in the preface, blurbs or in any publicity material; but only at the end of the book as fine print! I was glad that I didn’t buy the book for 399 bucks, but spent just Rs. 40 (10%) as lending fee.

Most of the Indian Writing in English published here is overpriced, except for certain authors like Chetan Bhagat. I haven’t read Bhagat yet, but despite being a best seller, his books are nominally priced (The 3 mistakes of my life at Rs. 95). I like him for that.

The latest entrant to the overpriced Indian Writing in English scene is Nandan Nilekani, with his ideas for the new century: Imagining India, priced at Rs. 699! I am not commenting on the quality of the book, of which I have just read an excerpt, and I don’t expect the book to be mediocre- from whatever I know (and have read) of the author as a businessman and a person. I feel that it is overpriced, even though it is a thick book. As rightly commented by a reader on Nandan’s blog: “..when you price a book such that it’s inaccessible to many, you are not letting the ideas reach the people”. Mr. Nilekani, apparently, has bagged the fattest advance for a nonfiction work in India. With India eagerly awaiting the release (on Nov 24th) this one would easily become the all-time nonfiction best seller in India. Moreover, it is quite obvious that Thomas Friedman would be showcasing this book to a wider global audience who might not be really interested in India or Nilekani.

Indian is a country where Public libraries haven’t evolved as in the West. Reading a new book still means paying a 10% of the book price at a privately run library (if at all they get a copy of the book you want to read) or actually buying the book (assuming you don’t buy the pirated copies of limited collection of best sellers available).

Ironically, in the last edition of The Sunday Times of India (Nov 16), which carried an excerpt from Nilekani’s Rs. 699 book, the opinion page carried the column by Gurucharan Das about reading and the state of libraries in India:

Just as a great city must have a big public park along with lots of small neighbourhood parks, so it must have one big public library and many neighbourhood libraries. Ideally, public libraries should be free, paid by taxes, and managed by the municipality. But this is a distant dream in India where the state has failed to deliver even more basic services like schools and hospitals.

Between 1900 and 1917, [Andrew] Carnegie founded 3,000 neighbourhood public libraries [In the United States], insisting that the local municipality had to guarantee tax support for running and maintaining them.

Perhaps, one day we, too, will spawn our Carnegie.

Till that day, I wish, at least the financially sound Indian writers don’t overprice their books by demanding unjustifiable advances from the publishers.

Guy Montag, you there?