Former South African cricket captain AB de Villiers inaugurated a community reading initiative named Library Junction at Churchgate railway station on the evening of 5th June. The project, executed by civic organisation Project Mumbai with structural cooperation from the Mumbai Central Division of Western Railway, was developed under the Read Mumbai banner to provide daily rapid transit passengers with direct, physical access to printed literature and magazines. During the launch workflow, de Villiers contributed signed copies of his own printed biography to anchor the library inventory.
The structural execution of the kiosk highlighted localized polymer waste conversion channels. The entire physical cabinetry and storage framework was manufactured by the Jyoti Organisation using recycled plastic containers collected during regional municipal plastic “recyclathon” collection drives. This substrate circularity approach paired processing waste management with print media promotion, establishing a physical kiosk within the south concourse area of the transit hub capable of holding 1,200 printed volumes simultaneously.
The cataloguing layout targeted multi-lingual distribution across regional demographics, stocking titles across English, Hindi, Marathi, and Gujarati. The physical publication selection covered commercial paperbacks, children's literature, self-help manuals, graphic comics, and high-ink-density monthly periodicals including National Geographic. Under the operational logistics designed by the group, a dedicated librarian managed issuance from 8 am to 8 pm daily, permitting transit card holders to borrow any softcover or hardcover publication for a revolving two-week duration without charging transactional fees.
The project planners outlined plans to turn the kiosk into a rolling thematic exhibition space to highlight diverse regional publishing outputs. The NGO source noted that future inventory updates would feature specialized focus windows, such as dedicated Marathi literature weeks, to systematically rotate publisher titles and match fluctuating commuter habits. Shishir Joshi, CEO and founder of Project Mumbai, and Pankaj Singh, divisional railway manager of Mumbai Central, formalised site management protocols to scale the model across additional metropolitan junctions using public-private capital collaborations.