Kolkata’s oldest bookshop says the city’s annual book fair is actually hurting business

‘The Kolkata Book Fair stretches on for about two weeks — if books start getting sold there then, what do the shops on College Street sell?’

The oldest existing bookshop in Kolkata has claimed that the annual book fair in the city, whose popularity is only second to Durga Puja, was actually harming Kolkata’s book business due to its long duration.

“The book fairs at London and Frankfurt — I’ve been to all these places — they last barely five days, and even during that duration, they are mostly a trade fair and open to the public only for a limited period. But the Kolkata Book Fair stretches on for about two weeks — if books start getting sold there then, what do the shops on College Street sell?” asked Arabinda Dasgupta, managing director of Dasgupta and Co., set up in 1886 on College Street, the hub of bookselling in Bengal, which continues at the same location, headed by the same family.

Mr. Dasgupta was recently in the news for converting a section of his historic bookshop into a free library for students. The library was to open during Durga Puja, but since his is a heritage building, permissions got delayed and now the facility, with 10,000 titles, is expected to become functional in February.

“I am not opposed to the book fair, but why drag it for so long? Why make it like Durga Puja? When the book fair is on, our business straightaway drops by 50%. We even tell some of our staff to go on leave during that period. Imagine the condition of the smaller shops,” Mr. Dasgupta, who opted out of the book fair way back in 1980, said. This year, the fair opened on January 18 and will continue until January 31 — a period of 14 days.

“Nearly 10% of the shops in College Street have shut down in the last two to three years alone. On Bankim Chatterjee Street (a part of the College Street area), about 20% of the shops which sold books until recently now sell stationery. All this because people are now going to the fair to make their purchases — they get a good discount at the fair and they expect shops to give them similar discount. You can say the livelihood of at least 10,000 people depends on the book business and it is under threat due to the book fair,” Mr. Dasgupta said.

He said a book fair should ideally serve as a platform for publishers from other countries as well as other States but that the one held in Kolkata had long deviated from this purpose. “For example, people from Kolkata who want Marathi books or Gujarati books — I actually get such customers — the book fair should be the ideal destination for them. But is that the case? No,” he added.

He said the need of the hour was not a lengthy book fair but more small libraries and neighbourhood bookshops throughout the city. “Literacy rate here is said to be 80%, and is supposed to be growing annually by 2%, which means there should be more bookshops. But no. The number of restaurants is increasing, the number of electronic shops is increasing, but the number of bookshops is decreasing. In south Kolkata, 80% of the bookshops are shut,” Mr. Dasgupta said.