A book lover’s unique project to establish libraries in rural areas
Man’s quest for knowledge has led to the creation and accumulation of tremendous amount of information. This quest for knowledge knows no bounds and limits and is never satisfied. It has continued since the dawn of civilization to the modern age. This hard-earned knowledge and information is valuable for the entire mankind. Crores of books have been written by the wise people across the globe and they have been reaching the book lovers through libraries.
Urban areas have abundant libraries, even private libraries have been quenching the thirst of knowledge in cities. But rural areas are lacking in such libraries. Taluk and hobli centres may have libraries, but remote villages have been lacking them. Nowadays Grama Panchayat’s have been setting up libraries. Keeping this in mind, a book lover from Athiguppe near Vijayanagar here, has decided to set up libraries in rural areas through the Universal Charitable Trust. R. Upendra Shetty, trustee of the trust has come up with this admirable idea.
Setting up libraries or sending books to the remote villages (not Grama Panchayat centre village) is the main agenda of his plan.
According to the plan, books will be distributed to 20 selected villages in Bangalore Rural district, Kolar, Chikkaballapur, Ramanagar and Mandya. This unique programme was symbolically inaugurated in Yavanika here on Feb 8 by distributing books to 10 people from 10 villages.
“We have already formed library committees in these villages. The committees have agreed to build / arrange buildings for libraries. Each village will be given around 2,500 books. Once in six months survey will be conducted about how to use these books / libraries. Except this survey, entire maintenance of the libraries should be done by the committee. By the end of 2013 such libraries will be set up in at least 100 villages,” he said.
The trust / Mr. Shetty is not spending much money on this project. The trust has been collecting used books from the people for this purpose. Already the trust had collected at least 17,000 books including novels, poetry, stories, children and women literatures and other books. The trust will distributed 2,000 to 2,500 books to each of its rural libraries.
Litterateurs, poets, writers and publishers are impressed by this initiative and assured to donate books to this cause. Kannada Development Authority Chairman Mr. Siddalingaiah also assured to donate 500 books to every libraries.
“The trust will never expect money from the people. If they interested to join hands with the trust, the can donate books. The trust will distribute them in selected villages to quench the thirst of the knowledge in rural areas,said Mr. Shetty.
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