MUMBAI: As social media permeates our life and people’s attention span becomes shockingly low, it sounds fascinating to hold a readers’ conclave today. It is against this backdrop that the Readers’ Conclave by Maati, a trust dedicated to art and culture, being held on July 20 and July 21 at Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) in New Delhi, deserves attention.
Being organised in collaboration with IGNCA, the first of its kind conclave is aimed at promoting the culture of reading.
“Maati plans to make it an annual feature, focusing on promoting reading culture, reviving old culture of reading clubs, buying and gifting books,
helping readers to choose the right books according to their interest and requirements,” said Maati Trust’s convenor Asif Azmi
Azmi added that hundreds of books are published everyday but it is difficult to choose what to read and what to leave. “In the age of search engines and huge amounts of data available in public domain, we will guide and encourage the readers to go to the original source and not to accept what they read in WhatsApp forwards as the final truth,” he said.
Author and G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant will be the chief guest of the inaugural session while his brother and seasoned corporate leader Ravi Kant’s book “Leading from the Back” will have an exclusive session devoted to it.
Authors who will participate in debates and discussions include Prakash Singh, Ram Bahadur Rai, Press Council of India’s member Jaishankar Gupta, Jitendra Srivastva, H A Qureshi, Suryanath Singh, Ran Vijay, Chandra Bhushan and Ruchi Singh.
Talking to TOI, Prakash Singh, IPS (retd) and author of “Memorable Chapters”, his memoir, said that the main reason for the dwindling number of readers of books is lack of commitment on the part of parents and teachers. “Parents and teachers are mostly responsible for the new generation’s lack of interest in reading. Parents and teachers must motivate students to read,” he said. They must set an example.
