Centre’s nodal agency ‘forgets’ Telangana and its historic public library movement
Hyderabad: Eight years after the formation of Telangana, the nodal agency of the Government of India to support public library services and systems and promote the public library movement in India remains oblivious to the existence of the country’s youngest State. More importantly, it doesn’t acknowledge the history of the public library movement in Telangana, […]
Hyderabad: Eight years after the formation of Telangana, the nodal agency of the Government of India to support public library services and systems and promote the public library movement in India remains oblivious to the existence of the country’s youngest State.
More importantly, it doesn’t acknowledge the history of the public library movement in Telangana, dating back to over a 100 years and considered one of the most significant social movements of the early 20th century in the country.
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The Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation (RRRLF), a central autonomous organization established and fully financed by the Ministry of Culture, it appears, has not updated all the details it has on the public library scenario in the country for the last eight years, with no mention of Telangana on the page where the scenario in each State and union Territory is given (http://rrrlf.nic.in/StaticPages_PubLibSystem/PubLibScenario.aspx). The doubt whether Telangana has been forgotten, or ignored, arises because the same page has been updated to include the union Territory of Ladakh, declared in 2019, while Telangana, formed in 2014, remains absent.
The other details on the website too are updated, including the addition of the name of the present chairman of the foundation, who is the union Minister of Culture. That the Foundation chairman, Gangapuram Kishan Reddy, is mentioned on the website despite his State not finding a mention remains a sore truth.
Former head of the Department of Library and Information Science, Osmania University, Prof N Laxman Rao, terming the glitch a very unfortunate one, said the library development in Telangana could be traced back for more than a century.
“In spite of the great history of libraries in Telangana, no information is mentioned on the website. It is unfortunate that information related to Telangana is ignored. It reflects on the updating of information on the RRRLF website,” he said, pointing out that Telangana was the second State (then Hyderabad State) in the country to have a Public Library legislation way back in 1955.
“Telangana has a great history for the involvement of libraries in Independence and social movements in Pre-independent India. We have several public libraries that are more than a 100 years old. Still, information about Telangana is ignored,” he lamented, requesting Minister Kishan Reddy to take up the issue.
