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Indian publishing is on a tremendous growth curve reflecting the economic
trends of an increasingly globalised Indian market.
The worth of the Indian publishing industry is
estimated anywhere between 1.3 and 1.6 billion dollars and is the third
largest in the world in English language publishing. The interest
in the international market in India and things Indian – from food, fashion,
films to IT and business services – has also created a lot of interest in
books by Indian authors. A wider international market is always healthy for
the domestic market and this is the trend we are seeing in Indian publishing
today.
India’s young
demographic profile has created an attractive market for businesses
targeting children and youth, and this includes publishing. Large
multinational publishing houses and established Indian ones are tapping
successfully into this market that is seeing a boom in children’s products
in branded clothes, shoes, fizzy drinks, chocolates, computers, multimedia
products and stationery. While the impact on
children’s publishing has led to more Indian children’s books in the market,
there is the real danger of books being seen primarily as ‘products’ with
the accent on slick packaging. India now offers top-of-the line
pre-press and printing technologies and has become a major outsourcing hub
for publishing houses from all over the world.
However, the historical circumstances of children’s
publishing in India have created a situation where there is little
professional expertise or experience in areas like editing, writing,
illustrating and translating. A dynamic and vibrant children’s
publishing scene relies on the creativity of not just authors and
illustrators, but also of publishers, editors and distributors.
Unfortunately this is not the case in India and specialized children’s
publishing is still developing. Because of this and the continued dominance
of imported books in the market, much of what is being published today has
the look, feel and style of western books and
doesn’t take into account any of the cultural specificities of the
content or the end user.
India’s colonial legacy
is a school education system that is completely at variance with its diverse
cultural character. Post-independent India pursued a massive nation building
agenda in which continuing the centralized, textbook-oriented British system
seemed the most practical way of tackling mass illiteracy and
administrative logistics. But lack of political
will and imagination has created an impoverished system where children have
little outside the textbook to nourish their minds. In such a scenario there
was no space for specialized publishing houses except a couple of
state-subsidized organizations.
It is only in the last 10
years that a few independent publishing houses have entered the field, each
in their own way breaking new ground. In the last five years or so the
economic scene has changed dramatically and India finds itself billed as
having the fastest-growing economy along with China. It is poised to become
the third largest in the next 30 years based on the ‘demographic dividends’
that the half-billion ‘young’ population can yield. These are extremely
alarming statistics for a country that is still struggling to feed its
children and send them to school.
It is against such
a backdrop that children’s publishing is growing in leaps and bounds, with
large and small players in the fray. Children’s publishing is being
transformed from a neglected and unviable business into a consumerist one
with huge market potential. When children’s books are produced in response
to a rapidly growing retail market comprising bookstore chains and lifestyle
bookstores, the danger of children’s books becoming packaged products is
very real. While in the developed regions, excellent books continue to be
produced in spite of largescale commodification thanks to a tradition of
excellence and creative synergy of writers, illustrators and editors, the
situation in India is very different. Here, a
textbook-like approach to children’s books is transformed by the dictates of
the market into assembly-line production. And in this climate, creating the
space for a vibrant, multilingual, culturally-rooted body of children’s
literature is a huge challenge.
Children’s
publishing in India has no support from school and community library
networks. Large bookstores do not give space or visibility to indigenous
children’s books, there are no exclusive children’s bookstores, nor does
children’s publishing receive attention in media or academia. Books are
created and positioned as entertainment products that flood the markets
along with remaindered books and imports that have always been the mainstay
of the book trade. In the absence of a vibrant book culture, good books by
talented writers and illustrators, both in English and the regional
languages, have little space to grow.
Mainstream publishing today caters to two kinds of markets –quality books
for the more
discriminating English-speaking urban elite and
mediocre to poor quality books for the masses made up of India’s vast and
growing middle class Both markets are huge and growing and will
keep the children’s book market thriving. The majority of parents and
teachers uncritically follow the trends set by this market. Compared to even
five years ago, there is greater awareness of the need for well-produced
Indian books which educate their children about Indian culture and heritage.
But the kind of books they are most comfortable
with are those that promote cultural stereotypes. So we are
seeing the creation of a slew of book-related media including live-action
films, animation films, television programmes and DVDs, that are based on
Hindu mythology. Hindu mythology with its great epics, fantastical settings
and characters, magic and drama is being transformed digitally for a global
market that has been primed for them with the heady success of films like
Superman and Spiderman, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and of the
Japanese cultural export Manga and Animae. Brand India is being promoted
globally through monolithic cultural images that reinforce stereotypes that
middle-class India, with its growing purchasing power, strongly identifies
with.
Unfortunately, this
marketing frenzy and hype leaves the huge majority of Indian children out in
the cold. Therefore, the challenge to committed
publishers who believe in the transformative and pro-active power of
children’s books is
two-fold: What kind books do we create for a
generation that is growing up in an increasingly divided world? And how do
we create a market for them both within India and outside? It
recognizes the need to create a space for strong indigenous voices that
reflect the pluralism and multilingualism of the country. Owing to India’s
large illiterate and semi-literate population, the process of change and
pro-action is slow and long. Yet, ironically, when
economic conditions are favourable for the growth of children’s publishing,
we find ourselves caught in the universal crisis of globalization where
there is less and less space for creating an inclusive and democratic market
for children’s books.
There are no
two opinions about the values children’s books must reflect and always have
at every point in history: peace, non-violence, honesty, fairness, justice
are some of the universal values that sensitive children’s writers and
illustrators all over the world have conveyed through words and pictures.
Styles have changed in response to social, economic and cultural changes in
society, but the values have remained constant, although every generation
has had to battle its own complex moral dilemmas. In the best children’s
books these complexities get distilled into their clearest and most creative
forms. The biggest challenge confronting committed
children’s book publishers caught in the dizzying tempo of globalisation and
technological change is whether we can continue to reach out with the kind
of books we believe in.
Unexpectedly,
in India, the very forces of globalization are creating a parallel and more
discriminating market for children’s books. The demand for quality education
in order to develop a skilled workforce for a country that will emerge as a
global power in the next ten years has given
a strong momentum to education for the underprivileged.
So we are seeing a wave of educational initiatives
through private-public partnerships all over the country. Reading literacy
is suddenly in focus and the need for good books is being recognized.
Books in local languages are characterized by a strong
cultural distinctiveness, unlike the homogeneity of books produced for the
mainstream market.
When the focus of
publishing shifts from the globalised marketplace and targets the vast
majority of underprivileged children, it opens up
the possibilities of creating books that include the realities of their
world and that of the world outside through stories and pictures that don’t
exclude their cultural experiences. There are rural libraries in
pockets of the country which have well-produced books in local languages
with folktales from forgotten parts of the country, real stories of tribal
children and street children, popular science and math books, translated
classics from other countries, books of creative verse and songs, proverbs
and riddles, resource books for art and craft using inexpensive local
materials and so on. A more egalitarian and ecologically harmonious
sensibility is central to these books. While texts reflect the ethnic,
cultural and linguistic diversities of the world, pictures create a visual
language that is enriched through adaptations of folk styles, street art,
illustrations by tribal and folk artists, photography and digital art
reflecting the ethnic and the contemporary in exciting ways.
To go against the trends
of the globalised market, and yet produce books that are financially viable,
is a challenge. Much of this kind of publishing remains local and part of
organizations involved in grassroots work. But there are mainstream
publishers who have taken up the challenge of balancing the two kinds of
publishing. In the last few years, books from
small publishers from India that have won international acclaim reject the
overtly slick and glossy ‘international look’. They reflect the cultural
experiences of the marginalized and strike a universal chord.
Sensitive writers and illustrators have helped create books that reflect all
that defines what good children’s books are.
If committed children’s
publishers can hold their own, bucking global trends, a body of children’s
literature can emerge that is socially inclusive in every sense. The
chances of such literature becoming mainstream are greater in a thriving
democracy like India where the lives of the majority are untouched by global
market forces. If we can connect across places and languages with such books
perhaps we can move towards creating a democratic and just world for future
generations.
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