Vanche Gujarat – a unique movement of Gujarat students

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Vanche Gujarat is a movement to instill reading habits into Gujarati students. Today Oct 30, about 50 lakh students of primary, i.e, above class V, secondary and higher secondary schools, as well as colleges, from across the state, were supposed to participate in this programme and they were supposed to read books for one hour, between 9 am and 10 am.

Vanche Gujarat website was launched in April this year. The third party website rankings shows that it isn’t very popular.

For Narendra Modi, pulling up 50 Lakh students may not be an issue as its Saturday and the schools are open. But, the question is sustenance of the program. Modi himself admits that “For a child ‘Reading’ is something which he does to pass the exam of school. We should infuse the environment with such a craze for reading that the child start taking ‘Reading’ as a tool to pass the exam of life.”

The books to be read is motivational books like Ramayan, Bhagvad Gita, Mahabharat etc. But, these books are already in the curriculum. Not just states, even CBSE has them. They are as good as text books.

The children are involved in a rat race to score the highest marks. This includes not stop studies from school to tutorials to home work. Gujarat understands this. The Vanche Gujarat will have supplementary slogans and other programs. Modi has already launched ‘floating-books’ initiative, in which Chief Minister gave away two books to book-loving students.

Any attempt to motivate students into the habit of reading is a very noble cause. Student’s at this age are very impressionable. Modi’s initiative is against a vibrant media which has commercial interest and has programs which are more impressive than reading a book. At the same time, students could get influenced by this effort to read. This can work both the ways.

Time will tell if the effort is going to be a success. However, I am sure that this will be partially successful. More and more states in India should follow this example. Gujarat can also take some ideas from Tamil Nadu and the recent Union HRD minister Kapil Sibals call for neighborhood libraries. Books have become bit costly and often loose out to other priorities in life.

[katharnak]

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