Reading Habits

In latest studies, India was ranked No. 1 in average time spent by an individual in reading, with approximately 11 hours/individual/week to boast, which is almost twice that of US & other European countries. Good stuff, right? Ahh, not so much. The ranking does not bring out the quality of reading as much as it does the quantity. I for one, believe, even with 72% literacy rate, India is nowhere near the quality of reading it should have. India lacks far behind in numbers of book communities, literary festivals, books reviewer, etc. Which means, knowingly or unknowingly, Indians consume a lot of substandard literary material.

Easy to get lost with so many options

The slew of modern age entertainment sources like movies, TV, mobile, internet and entertainment magazines can be held partially responsible. Thanks to the above channels, now passive leisure (Involving no physical or mental effort) gobbles up most of an individual’s time, which could be used on books. As a result, people start expecting books to provide the same mindless entertainment & instant delight as the other entertainment media. No wonder people feel books are boring & time-consuming. Hence, people do not want to invest time to read, digest and assimilate a book. Still, Indian book market is growing at a rapid pace than the rest of the world; we are the second largest market for English books. How is this possible? 

Appx. 70% of all books published are for K-12 and 20% for higher education (unfortunately neither of which seem to improve reading quality). Having 90% of books printed in India belonging to the educational sector and the unwarranted pressure upon education itself builds a negative association about reading in one’s mind. And off late the rest of the 10%, which make up the actual literary work, has been plagued with second-rate books (about which, I have talked in part in my previous article Mediocrity Begets Mediocrity), which neither improve reading quality nor provoke thinking. Also, having more than 22 official languages and more than 1650 languages doesn’t seem to help the cause (for, the efforts of improving quality are spread thin).

I can’t explain how, but I can say from my intuition that there is a positive correlation between level/quality of education and reading habits. A proper education seems to automatically make one appreciate good literature; maybe it’s the exposure they get; maybe the peer group they interact with; maybe their intellectual ability to comprehend better!

Parents should emphasize the importance of quality reading and create a milieu which rewards quality reading, instead of blindly stressing on mainstream education as the only form of reading. Also, society as a whole should develop an ecosystem promoting quality reading rather than just reading (but, with current reading habits with only one-fifth of the youth in our country reading anything outside their curriculum, it would be an achievement even to cultivate plain reading habit in the populous).

Apparently, we had a rich literary culture (mostly in regional languages) in recent past which seem to have faded over time. Furthermore, recent trends of pleasure reading, with no appreciation for quality content is starting to raise alarms. For, no value is being added to the society, literature or an individual. It’s crucial time for India’s reading habits. Habits which form now will either make or break our intellect as a nation. Of course, reading something is better than reading nothing, but it’s high time, we as a society, cultivate the habit of quality reading.