HVK Archives: Printer's Devil
Printer's Devil - India Today
Subhash Mishra
()
11 August 1997
Title: Printer's Devil - Parties resist a move to bring textbook scamsters
to book
Author: Subhash Mishra
Publication: India Today
Date: August 11, 1997
There crore students in Uttar Pradesh are literally turning over a new
leaf. When they returned to school after the summer holidays, their new
textbooks had clean white pages and clear printing. It was a welcome
change for students and parents who had struggled for five years with
poorly bound books, printed on inferior paper with blotchy ink. For them,
Minister for Basic Education Ravindra Shukla's threat to arrest printers
and sellers of pirated school books under the National Security Act (NSA)
and the Copyright Act couldn't have come sooner.
The so-called book mafia-comprising printers, distributors, politicians and
bureaucrats-had taken over the production of textbooks after the Uttar
Pradesh government stopped providing subsidy on books for basic and
intermediate education in 1992. Earlier, it had been providing subsidised
paper to official printers, who had to meet stipulated quotas for the
supply of school books. With the government withdrawing from the process,
printers began flooding the market with inferior, badly printed books.
"The day I became a minister, I vowed to get rid of this problem," says
Shukla, who belongs to the BJP. Eighty-rive books for basic and 42 for
intermediate classes are nationalised' and the Government holds the
copyright for them. Every year about 20 crore copies of these books are
printed. According to the minister, the Government lost an estimated Rs 50
crore in royalties in the five years since the book mafia started flooding
the market with cheap pirated books. "We have warned teachers of strict
action if found using pirated editions," says Shukla. He has also ordered
divisional commissioners, district magistrates and the district police to
raid presses suspected to be printing these editions. "We have already
seized pirated books worth lakhs of rupees and arrested over 12 people in
Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Kanpur and Meerut." says Shukla.
In March this year, even before the BSP-BJP came to power in Lucknow, the
Education Department had decided to decentralise the printing process of
nationalised books. A committee under the chairmanship of the director of
industries had identified 12 paper mills for the supply of paper for
textbooks that were to be printed by private printers. But the scheme ran
into trouble. "The 12 selected paper mills did not have the infrastructure
to produce paper of the specified quality," says Shukla. A shortage of
textbooks loomed ahead even as, following a controversy over the selection
of mills, the Government ordered an inquiry. Meanwhile, it had completed
the process of selecting printers at the district level and, as a sop for
them, hiked the prices of textbooks by 25 per cent.
But the nexus of printers, distributors, politicians and bureaucrats
reacted in typical fashion-by getting printers to express their reluctance
to print the new books. Shukla promptly offered the rights for printing the
books to the paper mills, forcing the "publishers" to climb down from their
confrontationist posture. But not before demanding that they be allowed to
sell the books which had already been printed. "Initially. the book mafia
offered me Rs 1 crore, and later Rs 8 crore, to get my go-ahead to sell the
pirated books. But I didn't change my stand," says Shukla. He claims he and
his family began receiving death threats after this. Malti Srivastava, the
officer in charge of book publishing in the Education Department, sought a
transfer when she also began to receive threats.
The minister today is triumphant: "I have succeeded in breaking the back of
the book mafia." But Om Prakash Sharma, MLC, thinks otherwise. He alleges
that Shukla was given Rs 8 crore as political donation by paper-mill owners
to acquire publishing rights. Sharma's grouse is that poor people won't be
able to afford the hike in book prices. "When there is a slump in the paper
industry, why have the prices of the books been increased?" he asks. He
has raised the issue in the ongoing Assembly session. "I am considering the
possibility of filing a petition against the Government," says Sharma.
The Samajwadi Party also opposes the new system which it says will "deprive
the poor of basic education". According to Shailendra Singh, president of
the Samajwadi Yuwajan Sabha, the party's youth wing, his workers will
launch an agitation to protest against the price hike and the threat to
arrest teachers and printers under NSA.
Book retailers and parents, however, have welcomed the minister's
initiative. "I have destroyed thousands of books," claims Chandra Prakash,
manager of Universal Book Depot, Lucknow. "The quality of books I sell now
is better." Officials admit that despite the ban, fake books are still
being sold. But there certainly are fewer of them on the shop shelves.
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