Kolkata Book Fair forced to reinvent itself

Small and medium booksellers in Kolkata are planning a host of events during the week-long Kolkata Book Fair this year. This is an attempt to boost revenues and recover the losses of around Rs 17 lakh incurred in 2007-08. The losses were sustained when the venue was shifted from the centrally-located Maidan to the Salt Lake Stadium.

This year, the Kolkata Book Fair, will be inaugurated on January 28 and will conclude on February 8. According to the Publishers and Booksellers guild, the organisers, the Guild is facing a severe fund crunch. This is one of the reasons why several events and activities are being planned to increase footfall and revenues.

As Milan Mela grounds, the venue for this year’s fair is not yet ready, the Guild will have 18 acres for the fair instead of the 23 acres on the Maidan. The Maidan had been hosting the fair for 31 years.

Tridib Chatterjee, general secretary, the publishers Guild, said: “Hiring the Milan Mela grounds itself costs Rs 40 lakh. It would have cost us Rs 1.5 crore, but thanks to the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s intervention, the rent has been reduced to Rs 40 lakh. However, we are still running a deficit of Rs 61 lakh.”

For this year’s fair, the 33rd edition, the Guild is planning a slew of new steps to boost revenues and recover the losses sustained earlier.

As part of the measures, there will a fleet of dedicated buses to ferry book lovers to and from the venue from six points in the city (three of these have been finalised – Taratolla in South Kolkata, Esplanade in Central Kolkata, and Shyambazar in North Kolkata).

Credit and debit cards will be acceptable at every stall. The fair will be branded with a theme song, Oi Dakche Boi, created by percussionist Bikram Ghosh. It is a music video and will be released soon.

While Scotland is this year's theme country, there will be an international pavilion with at least 18 participating countries. US, Sweden, Vietnam and Cuba will also be setting up stalls and registering their presence.

In a first, the fair will also be giving out awards like the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ worth Rs 2 lakh, ‘Promising Literateur Award’ and ‘Promising Publisher Award’ for Rs 51,000 each. The guild is also in the process of attracting corporate sponsorship for the annual event.

“These are difficult times for small and medium businessmen. We have approached a few corporations for sponsorship so that the fair can match international standards,” said Chatterjee. “The book fair’s expenses include Rs 61 lakh just for basic preparations before holding the fair. Apart from the rent, we would have to spend around Rs 20 lakh towards readying the ground, and another Rs 3 lakh on setting up stalls and other infrastructure,” Chatterjee pointed out.

“We have not raised the fee for participants although the number of stalls would be less this year because the venue is smaller,” Chatterjee added.

The Kolkata Book Fair is the second-largest in the world after Frankfurt and used to do a business of at least Rs 14 crore every year with 2.2 million visitors at the Maidan grounds in central Kolkata. According to the Guild, of the 800 stalls set up every year, about 650 stalls are set up by Kolkata-based small and medium Bengali book publishers. Each of these publishers used to do a business of close to Rs 3.8 lakh during the 10 days of the fair. This was when it was held at the centrally-located Maidan for over 31 years.

At the Maidan, a non-AC hanger used to cost Rs 95,000 daily, Rs 10,000 for administrative building, Rs 40,000 for open space, and Rs 10,000 for open-air theatre daily.

The old Maidan offered the organisers an area of 23 acres and that too without charging any rent. The only payments the Guild made for hosting the fair were to the police, CESC and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC).

The Kolkata Book Fair was shifted from the Maidan area in 2007 as the High Court felt it was causing environmental pollution. The fair at the Maidan faced a legal challenge from some environmental activists who managed to get it shifted to Salt Lake Stadium in 2007. The High Court had cancelled the Book Fair on Park Circus Maidan and directed the Guild to restore Park Circus to its original condition and hand it back to KMC at the earliest.

The bench issued the order in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by local residents of Park Circus who pleaded that the fair and its visitors in the densely populated residential area, housing several schools and colleges and two important hospitals, would violate the Pollution Act, Environment Protection Act and Noise Pollution Act.