Once being flocked by book and magazine-lovers throughout the day, the only exclusive bookstall at Mangaluru Central Railway Station, said to be as old as the station itself (1907), downed shutters permanently at midnight on Saturday.
Higgin Bothams on Platform No 1 at the central station sold newspapers, novels, magazines and other books for nearly a century. It is one among the nine bookstalls of Higgin Bothams that shut down in the Southern Railway zone on Saturday; the others being in Tambaram, Arakkonam, Katpadi, Jolarpet, Erode, Tirur, Ernakulam and Shoranur railway stations. K. Raghavendra Rao, stall keeper at central station, told The Hindu that steep fall in business, the Railways demand for more licence fee and policy to have multi-purpose stalls instead of single-use stalls contributed to the closure of the dedicated bookstall. Once doing business up to ₹ 25,000 a day, the Mangaluru stall’s business came down to less than ₹ 5,000 since four-five years, he said.
The reasons are many, Mr. Rao said, citing e-commerce platforms selling books at discounted prices and the advent of smart phones.
