The Belagavi Zilla Panchayat is encouraging the habit of gifting books among children of government schools.
A book gifting drive, “Nanna Pustaka Ninna Kaige”, is on in the 350 government high schools, involving around 1.4 lakh students, in Belagavi and Chikkodi educational districts. It involves students who passed out of SSLC gifting their books to their juniors.
It started with the Sundhole government high school in Gokak last week and is spreading fast to other schools and taluks.
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The nearly 70,000 students, who passed out this year, have been requested to donate their books to their juniors. Of them, we estimate at least 30-50 % will join the drive, says Zilla Panchayat Chief Executive officer R. Ramachandran. He has been inaugurating the programmes in several schools at once, via video conferencing or conference calls.
“We began this as a temporary exercise to arrange books for children till the government textbooks were received. But, we have realised that it serves a higher purpose. It cultivates the reading habit, and inspires students to donate. The programme is voluntary. But we are overwhelmed by the response. Girls and boys are coming up with their older class textbooks, notebooks and other books, to be passed on to younger students,” he said.
The givers and receivers are both happy, he said. Usually, old textbooks are sold to ragpickers or raddi dealers. They are used for packing material in shops or go back to paper-making. They may also end up in landfills. But here, we are recycling them in true sense by recycling them, he said.
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When the next year’s textbooks are received, they will be distributed among students without fail, he clarified.
“Participation in the programme is not compulsory,” Deputy Director of Public Instruction Ajit Mannikeri said.
“We have convinced teachers to let students keep their books when they have younger siblings or when they want to give them away to other needy children. The most interesting thing is that the poorest of the students are the happiest to give away their books. Looking at it is very satisfying,” he said.