Kolkata Book Fair 2008: A Fiasco

Kolkata Book Fair finally ran out of a home this year. For the past few years, the book fair at the Maidan, was consistently opposed by environmentalists because of the pollution it generated. The Maidan is the city’s last remaining greenery and it needs to be maintained for the health of the city. This is a very simple truth, but it seems to elude the educated lot of the city. Ignoring the rising the need for a cleaner and a better Kolkata, the city’s intellectuals along with the Publisher’s Guild, have opted for a strategy based on emotional blackmailing, state sympathy and a love for books, ignoring the quality of life to be affected completely. Books illuminate life, and reading broadens it. Kolkata Book Fair with its illustrious past failed to recognize this very truth. The Publisher’s Guild, organizers of the annual fair, remained obsessed with the idea of holding a book fair without addressing an important issue like environment. Yes, there are other environment issues pending for action, but it does not provide the Guild with an excuse to aggravate the situation. The annual book fair is Kolkata’s premier cultural event. Such an event calls for proper planning, foresight and organization completely absent in the Guild’s agenda. The fair is an event which brings readers, booksellers and publishers together and is a unique event in India, and this event cannot be hosted without regard for human, environmental and social concerns which are addressed by the books themselves in various forms. For years, the Guild has always depended on the state for resolution of its problems, be it political, financial or organizational. The Guild does not declare its financial statements in the public domain and yet it wants the state and the people of the city to resolve incongruities and fallacies that have been the creation of the Guild itself. It is time, that as a responsible body which contributes to the cultural growth of the city, the Guild releases its annual financial statements for the booksellers, publishers and the general public who have every right to know how their money is being spent. The Guild needs to answer for the loss it incurred every year for the past few years when it failed to address the basic problem of hosting a fair leading to last minute re-arrangements, wasted media promos and absolute chaos.

The present problem of homelessness has been brewing for quite sometime culminating in the fair being held at the adjoining grounds of the Salt Lake stadium in 2007. Displaying an acute lack of common sense, the Guild assumed that it was a temporary arrangement. This year once again it landed at the door of an equally callous state government with a request that the Maidan be made available to host the fair. Under the able supervision of an increasingly senile Chief Minister and an incompetent Mayor, Park Circus ground was arranged as a last resort. The Calcutta High Court in response to a valid petition threw out the book fair to avoid the spectre of a traffic and pollution nightmare in a place already engulfed in chaos. The Mayor, Chief Minister and many well known intellectuals of this city who have tried to highlight this eviction as injustice and a violation of freedom of speech etc have held their thinking prisoners to senility, arrogance and stupidity in equal proportions. Books change lives for the better, and the book fair cannot affect lives for the worst. This might sound to some like empty rhetoric but I believe it is an important one. The Kolkata Book Fair needs a permanent home and the sooner it is found the better it will be. The Guild needs to understand that its survival depends on the survival of the book fair, and with each passing day their limitations and incompetence will become an unassailable obstacle.

Readers, as they grow in number, which I hope they will, with increased and better commuting possibilities will reach the book fair. Like everybody in Kolkata, I look forward to an enlightening, sumptuous and enthralling book fair in its own home. Don’t worry about me; I shall be there when it happens.