‘Saahas Kitaab’ is an initiative about fostering reading culture amongst children, with an emphasis on physical libraries. It aims to create conditions and facilities wherein children are able to read – over and beyond – the fast-advancing constraints of the present ecology of education, which is increasingly tilted towards digital and electronic media.
It is in this respect that the project comes to reckon with the significance of vibrant physical libraries in the lives of children. The emphasis on engagement of children in physical (as distinct from virtual) libraries is not aimed at discrediting any of the digital learning resources now in operation. The purpose is to establish a balance, a certain sociological parity between the two so as to offset the exclusionary stranglehold of the electronic/digital media on the processes of reading and learning.
The project envisions a wider trajectory of learning and social engagement for children – one that serves to enhance their reading abilities so as to equip them to use internet learning in a more informed, refined, adaptive, inquisitive and responsible manner. This, more integrated approach to reading and learning has the advantage of exposing children to both indigenous and contemporary valencies of education. It may also help in reducing on them the negative, one-sided impacts of coercive and rampant metropolitanism.