Rekindling the tryst with libraries

In a small reading room run by agrantha shalain rural Palakkad, Kerala, part of the community library tradition that helped make the state a national model for public literacy, an old Malayalam edition of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai'sChemmeencarries a reminder of how reading habits can change. Tucked inside the book is an issue card, the kind libraries once used to record borrowers' names by hand. Its last entry dates from 1998. The building has not necessarily disappeared, the shelves may still be intact, and library support may continue — yet the long gap between borrowers captures a quieter question: are libraries still woven into everyday reading life as they once were? That question matters far beyond one library or one forgotten issue card. Kerala remains closely associated with India's library movement, but the challenge facing libraries today is not simply whether their buildings survive. It is whether people continue to use them, discover books through them and regard them as essential parts of everyday life. India has never lacked libraries. From major institutional reading rooms to modest village panchayat libraries, the country built an extensive network of public reading spaces through the twentieth century, many supported by governments and communities. The concern today, however, is less about the disappearance of library buildings than about changes in the relationship between people and physical libraries. The national evidence is more nuanced than a simple story of universal decline. A Quantitative and Qualitative Survey of Public Libraries in India, commissioned by the Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation and conducted across the country, covered 5,140 libraries, 4,082 public-library users and 2,035 non-users. The survey reported substantial 10–12% growth in membership since 2014 in most libraries, excluding some state-central and town/city libraries. At the same time, 54% of the 2,035 non-users still considered public libraries relevant to their self-development needs. These findings suggest that the issue is not that Indians have simply stopped valuing libraries. Rather, patterns of use are changing, and the physical library may no longer occupy the same place in everyday life for many people. That distinction is important. It would be misleading to describe India's libraries as experiencing a uniform collapse in footfall. What can be observed more cautiously is a gradual weakening of regular engagement in some settings, particularly where libraries face ageing collections, limited resources, changing educational habits and competition from smartphones and short-form digital content. In some places, libraries risk becoming repositories of books rather than active spaces for discovery. School and college libraries, too, can become dominated by prescribed texts instead of encouraging exploration and reading for pleasure. The emerging crisis, therefore, may not be a crisis of buildings at all. It is a crisis of relevance, regular engagement and the place of sustained reading in everyday life — precisely the kind of change that can remain invisible because nothing appears to be visibly breaking. The stakes go far beyond nostalgia for quiet shelves and old reading rooms. Sustained reading requires readers to remain with an argument, follow ideas across pages and connect information over time. Research on digital reading and fragmented attention has raised important questions about whether rapid, interrupted consumption can provide the same conditions for deep comprehension as sustained engagement with longer texts. For a country seeking to strengthen critical thinking, research capacity and original ideas, the quality of attention given to information matters. Libraries also have a long-standing role as shared spaces for access to knowledge. They can provide students who cannot afford extensive private tutoring or large personal book collections with resources that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. They can also function as quiet public spaces for learners and communities who may have few comparable places for study and reflection. When access to shared reading spaces weakens, the consequences can fall disproportionately on those who depend on publicly available knowledge. There is also a subtler cultural loss. Libraries preserve regional-language literature, out-of-print works and local histories that may not be prominent in mainstream digital discovery systems. Digital platforms have expanded access to knowledge enormously, but what appears in a search or recommendation feed is shaped by what has been digitised, indexed and made visible. If local collections are neglected, parts of India's literary and cultural memory can gradually become harder to discover — not through censorship or disaster, but through neglect. The good news is that libraries do not necessarily need reinvention so much as reimagination. Kerala's community-library tradition and the growth of independent community libraries and reading spaces in cities such as Delhi illustrate the potential of treating libraries as living social institutions rather than storage facilities. Where libraries create reasons for people to gather, discuss and discover, they can remain relevant even in a digital age. Simple interventions can make a difference: extending library hours to suit working people, organising book clubs and author interactions, integrating regional-language literature alongside English texts, and training librarians as curators and guides rather than merely custodians of stock registers. Technology, often blamed for changing reading habits, can also become part of the solution. Digitised catalogues, e-lending platforms and hybrid membership models can help libraries reach younger readers on their own terms, provided the physical library remains an anchor rather than an afterthought. Schools have a particular responsibility. Children need opportunities for unstructured reading in which they can discover books out of curiosity rather than only reading to meet examination requirements. Developing a reading culture cannot depend solely on examinations, prescribed textbooks or digital platforms. It requires regular opportunities to encounter ideas, stories and unfamiliar perspectives. Above all, reviving reading culture requires treating libraries as essential public infrastructure, worthy of sustained policy attention alongside roads, schools and digital connectivity. India's evidence does not justify declaring that its libraries are simply disappearing. It does, however, justify asking whether enough is being done to keep them meaningful in a changing culture of reading. The forgotten issue card in that Palakkad reading room should therefore not be read merely as evidence of one neglected book. It can be seen as a quiet warning — and also an opportunity. India still has time to ensure that its libraries remain places where people do not merely store books, but continue to discover, question, imagine and think deeply. vipinbenny5@gmail.com Published- September 06, 2026 03:57 am IST