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National Book Fair begins with clarion call to youth

PUDUCHERRY: Chief Minister N. Rangasamy on Monday said parents must come forward to train their children to attend the Indian Administrative Services examinations.

Speaking at the inauguration of the 11th National Book Fair at a marriage hall on Vallalar Salai here, he said the pattern these days was for parents to clamour for seats in engineering and medical colleges. “This year alone a total of 311 students have joined medical colleges under government quota.”

“Why cannot we produce administrators, IAS officers,” he asked. The habit of reading books would help students in competitive examinations. “Mere textbook knowledge would not be enough. Students must read other books too. Many great personalities have come up by reading books,” Mr. Rangasamy pointed out. He said the habit of reading books must be inculcated from a young age.

The Chief Minister also released books including `Effective Teaching Skills’ by Panch Ramalingam, `Teaching of English’ by P Bhaskaran Nair and Panch Ramalingam, `Women’s Education in Tamil Nadu’ by A Subramanian and `The Nature of Things’ by Devrekha Mauritlus. MLAs R Viswanathan and K. Lakshminarayanan also spoke.

Vel Sokkanathan, treasurer of the Pudhuvai Kamban Kazhagam, M.K. Sayeekumari, president of the Puducherry Cooperative Book Society, which is organising the fair, Panch Ramalingam, one of the directors of the society, and society secretary G. Murugan were present.

The fair, which will be on till December 26, has about 68 publishers. A discount of 10 per cent on all purchases and a special discount of 25 per cent for institutional buyers would be offered.

ISKCON, Ramakrishna Math and Isha Foundation have religions publications. The Ramakrishna Math stall has DVDs on the life, works and vision of Swami Vivekananda in several languages. They also have Gita chanting and CDs about Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, among others. The ISKCON stall has greeting cards with image of Lord Krishna.

Several publishers such as Cambridge University Press, J K Foundation and Bright Tech are offering low-cost editions on select topics. The JK Foundation stall is offering four titles of J Krishnamurthi — `Beyond Violence’, ‘Freedom from the Known’, `The First and last Freedom’, `Education and the Significance of Life’ — at a subsidised rate of just Rs 110.

Cambridge University Press India has low-priced editions in 18 titles including biological sequence analysis, thermodynamics and introduction to vectors. They have English-speaking courses for students, books on grammar in practice and pronunciation.

Bright Tech from Puducherry is offering Islamic books including the Holy Quran in Tamil, English, Urdu and Arabic, life and sayings of Prophet Mohammed and also Quran recitation books and audio CD for children. Talking of Islamic books, the stall from Ilakiya Cholai has books by journalist Iftikar Gelaani.

Soorya Toys sells Montessori toys, wooden toys and alphabet puzzles among other things. Venus Educational Traders and Publications from Nagpur have two-sided charts each priced at Rs 60 in subjects including mathematics, biology, physics and chemistry for students studying from standards VII to XII. Dove Multimedia has CDs, DVDs on various topics including pre-school Tamil, nursery rhymes, basic maths, freedom fighters, medical encyclopedias, how to learn to speak French, Spanish and German.

In the basement, members of the Pondicherry Women’s Conference have flower vases, skipping ropes, bindis, ornamental jewellery for women and bags on sale. And if you are hungry after picking up books, mushroom soup and bonda would be welcome thing. There is this stall that sells mushroom pickles and fresh mushrooms.

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