Our Local Book Fair and Quality of Books
Its not always good to write only about business all the time specially when things are not going that good - isn’t?
So, I do some personal posting from time to time just to change some moods. 
Before I indulge into some local ranting, let me just do some routine update on India business scene.
- Petrol prices are slated to come down by Rs. 5 anytime this week which is great news for us using petrol engines. Price of Gas and Diesel will also come down.
- Government and IT industry doing its best to recover from Satyam scandal.
- Pan-India license fee for 3G mobile to be doubled.
Well thats it in short. On a personal note, our state government is slated to raise our salaries by a good margin but it will still fall short on Central government employees by 30-33% depending on position of the employee. It has angered the employees to no end as our tiny state depends on central government for 90% of the state budget and center has already given written assurances to seven backward states including ours that it will provide full support if they implement the central pay-scale. Lets see what happens!
Now the main topic. Last week, local municipality organized a book fair on the central open compound of our small town which has a population of over 100,000 (very big town by western standard but its just a big village by Indian standard). I usually don’t like to visit any of the fairs held in our village but this time I had to go with a friend of mine who needed some books. Once there, I was really impressed by the size and 
magnitude of the fair. There were more than hundred stalls - big and small showcasing their publications and products. What amazed me more were presence of some very big publication houses from Kolkata who have come all this way to a tiny and remote place in a landlocked, backwater state. So we went around the galleries and looked for books he wanted.
While browsing through pavilion to pavilion I noticed stark contrast of qualities of books published by local publishers and those of Kolkata who also had some international books on their shelf. Its not only the catalog printing that differentiates the books, but also contents. One just has to browse through local books for few minutes and see the so many misspelled words that he or she would rather leave the book alone.
I often ask myself why would this happen? Is it a mistake by the author who is too lazy or insincere in proof reading? But this argument does not explain as if he is lazy or has no time he can always hire someone to do proof reading. The most satisfying answer I get for myself is the low level of qualification of those who work in the press. Being a small and backward place, local printing houses don’t have too many highly qualified workers. As a result although the writer or his employee has submitted the correct and final copy - books are still full of mistakes. Another thing also gets highlighted by this and it is lack of professionalism. For example, if I want to print a book with a local publisher and it is full of mistakes despite all the efforts on my part to make it error free, I would never go back to it and ask my friends not to use them!
Lets forget it for now and go back to the main topic. After going through 35-40 stalls (of publishers from outside) - my friend could finally find 3 out of 5 books that he had been looking for. Although I had no intention to buy any books myself, I ended up buying two books which I hope to utilize for my blogging purpose. The almost got a big hole in my pocket as those two books cost me close to $40.
We were already 4 hours inside the compound, so we went to a tea stalll, had some tea with Parathas and came out of at the stroke of 9 P.M. On our back, we heard the announcer telling everybody that the cultural program would star at 9.30 P.M. But none of us are much into those things which we think as lousy.