I am happy to be here this morning to inaugurate the 14th World Book Fair organised by the National Book Trust of India. Over the years, this biennial event has become popular among both book-lovers and publishers. The World Book Fair is now a gathering point for publishers from India and abroad.

A book fair, however, is more than a trade event or a meeting place for booksellers and publishers. A book fair, more so a world book fair, provides an opportunity to the people to keep track of new ideas and perspectives.

For, books are like windows that open up to the limitless world of knowledge. They encourage us to think and expand our horizon. They are the source of education and intellectual inspiration. Indeed, books serve to enlighten society and, throughout human history, have proved to be more powerful than weapons of death and destruction.

It is, therefore, not surprising that history is replete with instances of burning of books and sacking of libraries to subjugate people and establish political, racial or religious supremacy. The power of knowledge, of ideas, of imagination, has always scared those whose strength derives from bigotry and fundamentalism.

We have seen books being burned from Berlin to Bradford. We have seen books being banned and authors persecuted. But neither burning nor banning has been able to suppress the human mind - ideas have survived, new ideas are being born and the quest for knowledge continues.

Books, as we know them today, date back to the advent of the printing press. Before that they existed as hand-written texts. And, even before that, there was the oral tradition. In the beginning, of course, there was sabda, the word, as Brahma, the inner soul. Reverence for knowledge and dharma came to be identified with reverence in the book.

India can boast of a rich oral tradition, dating back many millennia to the composition of the Vedas and Upanishads. Sruti was the means of handing down through generations our ancient texts over centuries. Sruti was that which was heard and realised. It was literature that sought to both enlighten the individual as well as serve the interests of the community.

For instance, the Vedas are as much an instrument of salvation of the individual soul as the prosperity and well-being of the community at large. That oral tradition was to later transform itself into the written tradition. First came the palm leaf manuscript. Later paper was used. Much later came the printing press.

The spoken word of the oral tradition was restricted to those to whom it was passed on. The pothis, for obvious reasons, had limited access. The printing press, however, had a revolutionary impact - millions of people today have access to what was in the beginning sabda.

From serving the basic needs of communicating fundamentals to a child, and thus teaching the child to read and write, a book today serves many purposes. But the common factor of all these purposes still remains the same as that of the oral tradition: disseminating knowledge, basic and specialised. Knowledge that flows from ideas; knowledge that stems from experience; and, knowledge that is born of discoveries. Above all, knowledge that lifts the darkness of ignorance, intolerance and inwardness.

The revolution that was brought about by the printing press has yielded place to yet another revolution. The advent of new technology has provided us with new vehicles of knowledge dissemination. Ideas, images and impressions, instead of leaping out from the pages of a book, now leap out at you from computer screens. Today, instead of reading a book, you can hear an audio book. In fact, while audio books, at one level, take us back to our oral tradition, at another level, they have made it possible for those who, for a variety of reasons, can neither read nor write, to access knowledge. We are also witnessing a fast shift towards electronic journals which can be accessed by millions of people courtesy the information superhighway. A book, therefore, no longer need exist in physical form or between covers.

Will books, then, become extinct ? Will libraries disappear and leave us with formless digital volumes that will exist in the netherworld of cyber space ? Will the turning of pages be replaced by the clicking of mouses ?

Similar apprehensions were experienced with the advent of television, when newspapers wondered whether they would soon cease to exist. But we have seen the power of the printed word which has survived the onslaught of the audio-visual image. I have no doubt that printed books will survive the cyber age.

To ensure that survival, however, publishers have to play an important role. Books have to be made affordable so that individual buyers are not constrained by the price line. I do understand that the cost of printing a book has increased over the years. I am happy that this is partly due to the fact that authors have begun to receive their fair share.

One way of overcoming the problem of high prices is to strengthen the system of public libraries. I would urge people not to look forward to official patronage for setting up huge libraries that invariably become unwieldy and inaccessible to the masses. Residential colonies and communities should set up their own libraries. Not only will these be more accessible to the common people, especially children, but they will also foster a sense of community participation in making books available to all. This experiment has been tried successfully in West Bengal, where numerous community-run libraries exist, catering to all age groups. I also call upon schools to spend more on their libraries so that the habit of reading can be inculcated among children in their formative years.

I would also like to urge Indian publishers to invest more in publishing books written in all Indian languages. There are fine authors who write in Indian languages and greater effort is called for to make their work available to readers from other regions. Simultaneously, efforts should be made to translate their work into English so that a larger number of people, both in India and abroad, have access to their books. Once again this is an area where publishers can, and should, play a significant role.

I thank the organisers of the 14th World Book Fair for this opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you. I wish publishers, authors and booksellers a successful gathering at this fair.

Thank you.