Books for All movement spreads to Sivakasi

The Books for All campaign will part of the second edition of Sivakasi Printex 2019 exhibition on printing and allied types of machinery and consumables which is scheduled from 12 to 14 April in the print hub.

The idea, as P Sajith of Impel-Welbound said, is simple. Gift a book to a child you know - and a child you don't know. He stated, "And so 1.4 billion Indians can gift a book.

Imagine what will happen if 1.4 billion Indians gift a book (not one, but many) to each other."

The next 20 years will see over 500 million young parents in India, and it is possible they will impart no reading message downwards if they have not been reading themselves. The ramifications are visible in the workforce one sees in retail malls and call centres. There is an army of disjointed and inarticulate, and possibly dysfunctional youth being unleashed on the job market. They are ill-equipped to take forward the boom that has been promised.

With a population of 1.4 billion (over half below age 25 and nearly two-thirds below 35), a working-age population of about 850-900 million and a labour force of about half that number, one might expect that it is simply a matter of time before India becomes an economic superpower. But the reality is different.

For starts, printers and publishers and print buyers can make a difference. Start a reading day campaign, a minimum of four days a week. This can percolate to the customers, colleagues and indeed children and grandchildren.