Oduva Belaku: Food for thought beyond what's taught in school

On Saturday morning, Radhika and her schoolmates are spending time reading in the government library right next to their school in Hulihyder village, Koppal district.

That one hour before or after school is when they indulge in reading outside their curriculum.

Of late, they have been spending more time in the library. Painted in bright pink, the library walls are lined with portraits of famous poets and proverbs in Kannada.

“The library looks attractive. We can keep the books with us until we finish reading. It’s an opportunity to learn beyond lessons in our textbooks,” says Radhika.

Her high school friends Gayathri, Bhagyalakshmi and Bhoomika agree. From nutrition to biographies of freedom fighters and riddles, the girls say they love reading on a wide range of topics.

Not that the students did not have access to books earlier. But they seldom visited the library, they confess.

The Rural Development & Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department’s ‘Oduva Belaku’ programme, under which libraries across the state have been refurbished, has attracted them to these reading spaces.

Panchayats are giving library cards to children between 6 and 18, encouraging them to be avid readers. While earlier Rs 10 was levied per book for borrowing, now the panchayats are bearing the cost themselves, making it free for the kids.

“We want to create a public libraries’ movement and turn libraries into local resource centres,” Panchayat Raj principal secretary Uma Mahadevan says. The programme is not limited to placing books in the libraries, but has an interactive component as well. “We are conducting science activities, training for competitive exams, career counselling, among others,” she says. After reading a book, children share their thoughts on it with the librarian.

The programme was launched on November 14, 2020 and will conclude on February 28, 2021.

Until now, 6.76 lakh children have enrolled in the 5,622 gram panchayat libraries. A huge part of this was the book donation drive. While NGOs coordinating with the government donated numerous books, the rest were raised by going door-to-door, seeking book donations.

In one library in Rajanukunte near Bengaluru, 200 children have enrolled under ‘Oduva Belaku’.

“We’ve added 800 books through the donation drive. Earlier, children would not turn up in the library. Now, we see them regularly. We are also encouraging out of school children to make use of the facility,” said Krishnappa, the librarian.

The programme has brought reading spaces alive, says Kavita Ratna of the Concerned for Working Children (CWC), a nonprofit that is among those helping the government in implementing the programme.

“Oduva Belaku is embedded in the overall concept of child-friendly grama sabhas. It’s part of a larger process where children can raise their issues in grama sabhas and have a safe space to come together,” she added.

The Azim Premji Foundation, Pratham Books, Shikshana Foundation are some other organisations involved in this. Citizen groups such as Whitefield Rising and Yuva Foundation have also contributed books.

The programme was conceptualised in the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic when schools were shut.

“The gram panchayats were roped in for Covid management in rural areas to take care of migrant relief, institutional quarantine and home isolation among other tasks. We saw them manage the situation efficiently. With schools shut, we felt they could also play a role in ensuring that children kept in touch with reading,” Mahadevan says.

The department wants to keep the movement alive by adding textbooks, Kannada-English dictionaries and atlases. It will train librarians to continue the momentum.