Bhopal Municipal Corporation’s Kitab Ghar gives old books a new lease of life
The ‘Kitab Ghar’ initiative either collects and stores old books for reading, or recycles them into new notebooks and distributes them to poor children.
While reading plays a key role in a child’s development, Bhopal’s Municipal Corporation (BMC) is receiving book donations through its ‘Kitab Ghar’ initiative. Since its inception in 2019, more than one lakh books have been donated so far.
Bhopal’s additional municipal commissioner MP Singh said that the project was started as part of various initiatives under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
“It has been a long standing practice since generations in many families to not dump books after completion of an academic year. They share it with children of the same family or associated families to ensure saving of money and also wastage of books. The Kitab Ghar initiative has revived that practice, but with a larger objective of helping underprivileged kids study from the same books. This can be helpful particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when families’ finances have gone for a toss,” he told The New Indian Express.
The books are either kept in BMC’s libraries or are recycled into new notebooks before they are distributed among children studying in government schools who cannot afford to purchase new notebooks.
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The civic body has also partnered with kabadiwala.com, a platform that specialises in providing free doorstep service of scrap collection and disposal to people in five cities — Bhopal, Indore, Raipur, Lucknow, and Nagpur.
The books are first stored in Resident Welfare Associations or in BMC ward offices. They are then segregated based on their requirements and utility.
“We not only get the old books from families but also tell them that by doing so how many trees have they saved,” thekabadiwala.com Director Anurag Asati told The New Indian Express
The books range from school textbooks, magazines, and notebooks, and also useful study material that the next batch of students can use.
One of the students who was benefitted from this initiative, Athar Ali, said, "With COVID-19 having hit our family income, I couldn't buy books for preparing for engineering entrance exams. So I've started going to one of the libraries which are having books channelised through the Kitab Ghar initiative. I am getting considerable help in my preparation,” according to The Logical Indian.
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Edited by Kanishk Singh