A Catalyst Of Education And Creativity
An urge to encourage and augment creativity and learning drove the management of this establishment to pick up this trade related to education as their livelihood. Those managing the affairs come from highly respectable family of Bihar. The House has also been contributing Bihar through its active participation in national-level PATNA BOOK FAIR every alternate year which remained a dream in this part of the country until recently. The fair attracts more than five million people in a short duration of 12 days.
Publication of information, knowledge, skill and views are central to the development of a society. It has a sweeping impact on all areas of human activity. Unfortunately for us in India, in recent times, this industry has suffered a deterioration in the quality of contents auguring not too well for the promotion of creativity and originality. This trade is proudly called an industry by the book traders but without the benefits of an industry due to the apathy of the Government which, too, has contributed greatly to its deterioration.
Novelty & Co., one of the oldest publishing houses in Bihar, started publication some 50 years ago and strived to establish a tradition of not only churning out the volumes but the quality and standard. Making a humble beginning in 1945 it has come a long way. The most distinctive feature of this establishment has been that it gave opportunity to new authors who were able to produce quality books, but in the absence of familiarity and popularity with the readers such products ran the risk of poor saleability. Ostensibly, such a proposition did not attract most of the publishers as the financial viability becomes the principal determinant of any economic activity. But the vision of this House was that ‘Publishing’ is not just another industry of maximising pecuniary gains at the cost of giving out trash and filth to society which has an all pervading swamping impact on the quality of human resource.
It is gratifying to note that the experiment yielded encouraging result and soon the new authors gained acceptability among the readers. The House has still been maintaining the record to publish titles written by such authors who had not written earlier. The publishing house has come to be recognised as one of the key names in publishing. In the beginning the founder Late Shri Taranand Jha popularly known as Tara Babu himself wrote titles for secondary levels. But later on when his irrepressible desire of bringing out quality books by new authors was given vent to, he found himself amidst a host of brilliant writers.
Prominent among those whom Tara Babu gave the first break as authors and who in course of time rose to acquire national and international eminence includes Dr. Kameshwar Sharma, Dr. Chetakar Jha, Dr. D. Thakur, Dr. Manoranjan Jha, Dr. Kamta Prasad, Dr. M.L. Mehta, Dr. Ali Ashraf, Dr. V.R. Chariar, Dr. Bhola Singh, Dr. Ray Akhilendra Prasad, Dr. Narmadeshwar Prasad, Dr. Bachandeo Kumar etc. These authors wrote some books of high standard for the publishing house. The decades of 50s and 60s was the period when it was very difficult to have an access to international market. Events like book fairs which immensely help exposure of published materials were unheard of.
Tara Babu who has a bright academic career was always involved deeply in academic activities. He used to organise functions for intellectuals and academicians in those days every year which used to continue overnight. Tara Babu himself had been a Senator from Patna University who was not a government nominee but got the prized post at the hustings in good old days when stalwarts like Dr. A.K. Sen, Shri R.I. Singh etc. were also in the fray. He had also been a Director of Bihar State Text Book Publishing Corporation Limited—a government undertaking responsible for publishing and distributing school-level nationalised text books in Bihar.
Not being guided by the commercial trends alone, the publishing house made relentless efforts by being responsive to the needs and aspirations of the reading public keeping the well being of society at large in view. Another dangerous trend that crept silently into the industry and overtook it soon with all its dampening impact is the growth of trash, filth and spurious books being published in the name of subsidiary books. These books not only give a distorted and shortsighted views of the subject matter but also distracts readers from going in for standard and quality books. Such a trend will inflict an incalculable damage on the efforts to cultivate excellence in education. This House has thoughtfully chosen to eschew this trend and to contribute towards averting downfall in the quality and standard of published materials by continuing to produce quality books in the face of gigantic publishers that the industry is beset with.
Survival of standard publishers in the wake of ever increasing demand for shabbily written help books and guides selling in the name of securing success at the examinations has become extremely difficult. In order to refuse to succumb to this, Novelty & Co. switched over to bookselling from publishing in the late 80s. The gravity of the situation can be understood by the fact that while this House had been dealing exclusively in its own publications till 1975, today it is doing 99% business of others’ publications (i.e. books published by different publishers). The cost of production has also shot up to inconsiderate height as a result of rampant publications and growth of the undesirables. Papers have often been in short supply and the valuable input is squandered for the undoing of educational excellence. In an economically backward state like Bihar this has been on the rise in abnormal proportion. Such spurious books showing spurious talents of the authors are interestingly called ATOM BOMB, SANJIWANI BOOTY, HIT BOMB, ANAND ATOM BOMB etc. Readership of the classics and standard text books is on the wane.
Novelty & Co. while upholding the business ethics tailored to the social reality has been striving hard to strengthen the link between the quality and standard of books vis-a-vis over all social well being. If the unholy trend of publishing trash and filth is not given an immediate halt, creativity will be done away with and all scholastic efforts will receive unimaginable damage which, of late, has been receiving serious jolts. Books will not remain a source of inspiration and the most potent weapon to fight the evils will be lost. All kinds of adultery can be digested but adultery in books should never be. Yes, part of the responsibility rests with the readers, teachers as well as the writers too, but the responsibility of book industry in general and publishers in particular cannot be ignored. If the publishers do not mend their ways, the day is not far when we, the nation-maker would be taken as nation-destroyer by the reading public.
Writer – N.K. JHA
Secretary, Patna Book Fair
