Encourage the public to read for pleasure and they will surely find pleasure in non-fiction as well as fiction, classics as well as modern, fact as well as fantasy.
Shahera Shahid, Information and Broadcasting Secretary, echoed sentiments we so often hear from South Asian politicians wanting to appear cultural saviours but with no empathy with the public mood.
The government is taking steps to revive the habit of book reading among the general public to preserve our cultural heritage and to continue maintaining a connection with the past.
Summarising Shahid’s speech, Tribune reported:
Unfortunately, the educated people had almost given up on reading books. There was a dire need to inculcate this habit among the younger generation so that they could learn about the glorious past.
Nothing wrong with learning about the glorious past, of course, and especially in this 75th anniversary year.
But constantly politicians bemoaning a declining reading culture exhort the pubic to rush out and buy a book so they can learn something, which of course is the mindset arising from school and college and exactly the reason so many people do not enjoy reading at all.
Encourage the public to read for pleasure and they will surely find pleasure in non-fiction as well as fiction, classics as well as modern, fact as well as fantasy.
Encourage digitisation of these books and even more people will enjoy reading. Pakistan may only be at 44% internet penetration, but that’s still 100 million people online, almost as many as the UK and Spain combined. Both have thriving digital books sectors while Pakistan has only a handful of books available in digital format.
By doing so the publishing industry, the wider media industries and the Pakistan economy will be enhanced.
