The Hindu Business Line : Knowledge centres

Libraries play an integral role in making Mumbai a knowledge city. They are `knowledge centres' that foster growth and learning in an environment that is "open, inclusive, democratic and egalitarian."

Mumbai's development has always been in the news regardless of the actual progress made in that direction. Recently, the Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) proposed to start a dialogue with major political parties for developing Mumbai into a `knowledge city' with modern social and physical infrastructure. Mumbaikars, particularly the young, as well as the less privileged, should welcome this news because it gives them hope for acquiring higher educational qualifications and professional expertise. This is also an opportunity to look at a few of Mumbai's problems that need to be dealt with, if the IMC objectives are to be achieved.

To meet international competition in the area of IT, telecom and other allied services, the IMC intends to act as a pressure group vis-à-vis the government, interacting on areas such as labour reforms, work with chambers of industry and commerce and set up a think-tank comprising prominent citizens, businessmen, former civil servants and academics. The objective of this think-tank is to create public opinion on economic, social and political issues.

Earlier this year, McKenzie brought out a report, Vision Mumbai - Transforming Mumbai into a world-class city'. Let's look at the recommendations as they have a bearing on the current IMC move. The McKenzie report aims at developing Mumbai into a world-class city with a comparable quality of life. It spells out an eight-point programme involving an outlay of $40 billion over a 15-year period. It expresses concern that the quality of life in Mumbai has deteriorated and is likely to get worse over the next decade. For many loyal Mumbaikars, transforming Mumbai into a liveable facility, or even preventing its further collapse is in itself a worthy goal.

Towards the objective, the report targets four high-end services — financial services, health care, IT and ITES (IT enabled services) and the area of media/entertainment/telecom. This itself would increase Mumbai's gross domestic product (GDP) by 2 to 3 per cent and create over two lakh additional jobs over the next 10 years, says the report. It also places emphasis on construction, hotels, tourism, recreation and modern format retail businesses.

It observes: "To give recreation a fillip, 5-10 diverse attractions should be made world-class. These could include upgrading the Museum, the Elephanta Caves, the aquarium, the zoo and the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, setting up a world-class multi-purpose indoor stadium and convention centre (like the Madison Square Garden), clearing and redeveloping both the western and eastern seafronts with cafes and restaurants and restoring the heritage precincts in the Fort area."

Interestingly, the report adds that "Mumbai could truly become a `city that never sleeps' if it were to allow shops, restaurants and bars flexible operating hours. ... The Government should zone areas for supermarkets and hypermarkets in large land parcels such as the Mill lands."

Next comes the emphasis on making Mumbai a major consumption centre. The McKenzie report also talks of redevelopment of the city block by block. But the important aspect that is ignored in this report is that it has no word on the creation of knowledge centres. World over, concern has been expressed about the declining trend of library book borrowing among the population. The thrust of the McKenzie report is mainly on redevelopment of Mumbai into new residential and commercial blocks, construction of malls, multiplexes, hotels and opening up the current health infrastructure to public-private partnership, besides cataloguing some of the proposals for rail and road projects.

In the sphere of education — it refers to "upgrading access to and quality of education" and points out that education in Mumbai can be improved by launching three initiatives. The release of land for setting up of 5-10 quality private schools should be expedited to reduce one of the key complaints of executives relocating to the city; the adoption of the city's municipal schools by NGOs and communities should be promoted to reduce dropout rates and quality vocational training should be stepped up, especially around the new areas of retail, recreation and ITES.

But the question that needs consideration is whether the IMC exercise of making Mumbai a `knowledge city' will be only on these lines. The reference in the brief news report to issues such as labour reforms, levying user charges for the infrastructure to be created and creating public opinion on national and international issues of economic, political and social significance that affect Government policies shows deviation from this objective.

The term `knowledge economy' is, these days, a widely used term in the context of economic liberalisation. If there is to be a wider participation of the common man in the process of economic liberalisation, he needs to be given real and substantial opportunities to improve his lot. This cannot be achieved merely by laying accent on IT initiatives.

Merely privatising the educational institutions will not achieve this objective. Witness the current public controversy in Maharashtra and elsewhere about the lack of even basic facilities in engineering and medical colleges. In this context, public libraries become important.

Charles Leadbeater, in his recent book Up the Down Escalator, observes: "The Public Library should have a prominent role in a knowledge-based society... The most ambitious library development project in the world is underway in Singapore, where the National Library Board (NLB) is building about 100 libraries over an eight-year period. The NLB is innovating with "fast food" libraries in shopping centres; libraries that hold performances of live music; libraries entirely designed for teenagers; the first ever `do-it-yourself' libraries, where electronic systems help users to put books back on the shelves in the right place, so that staff do not have to do so; arts libraries based entirely on materials linked to music, film theatre and performing arts.

"The principle behind Singapore's aggressive expansion of libraries is simple. Rather than `one size-fits-all', the NLB is seeking to create many different kinds of libraries, each with a different market and users, and each providing a new lesson about what works. The other key motto at the NLB is: one good idea, many different iterations. Having first experimented with libraries located in shopping malls, the NLB is now on to its sixth such venture."

Until a few years ago, all financial sector seminars regularly talked about making Mumbai another international financial centre between London and Frankfurt on one hand and Sydney and Tokyo on the other. Later, we began to talk of making Mumbai another Singapore with high-rise apartments, commercial blocks, malls and multiplexes, but missed out on the most basic steps in providing people with updated modern libraries like Singapore.

Thomas A Stewart, a member of the board of editors, Fortune magazine, observes: "Information and knowledge are the thermo-nuclear competitive weapons of our time. Knowledge is more valuable and more powerful than natural resources — big factories or fat bank rolls." Young Mumbaikars will benefit only if the State and the public and private sector take deep and abiding interest in the creation of public libraries.

Today, general libraries are very few. The most popular among them being the British and American libraries and other libraries set up by the 19th- and 20th-century Bombay industrialists and philanthropists. Much therefore is expected of the expert committee consisting of retired bureaucrats, businessmen, educationists and social activists. Hope is not lost.

Picture by P.V. Sivakumar

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