Keeping with New Education Policy 2020 commitments: the Indian Government proposed a few new developments for libraries and readership.

In the context of libraries, the New Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), by the Indian Government, aims to develop digital libraries and school/ public libraries for promoting the readership habit and maximum use of libraries to ensure the availability and accessibility of books to the students without any barrier of language, technology, or geography. In order to fulfill its commitments under NEP 2020, the government has proposed a few new initiatives for libraries and readers in its Union Budget 2023.

By taking the National Digital Library of India's (NDLI) success ahead, the Government has announced plan to develop the National Digital Library for Children and Adolescents. The National Digital Library of India (NDLI), headquartered at IIT Kharagpur that was launched in 2018 by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development in India came up in forefront during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide free access to the variety of content from the primary level to the postgraduate level across all disciplines.

To make up for the learning losses that occurred during the pandemic, the Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Union Budget 2023, proposed the development of National Digital Library for Children and Adolescent. The aim of “A National Digital Library for children and adolescents” is to:

Facilitate the availability of quality of books across geographies, languages and genres.
It will provide device agnostic accessibility of content that aims to offer a seamless experience across many devices and systems without the need for special adaptations.

An adequate supply of quality books that cater to the needs and interests of communities is required to increase readership across the country. The Finance Minister also emphasized strengthening the National Book Trust (NBT) and the Children's Book Trust (CBT) to build a culture of reading and promote widespread reading. Government will encourage NBT to produce and encourage the production of good literature in English, Hindi and other Indian languages and to make them available at moderate prices to the public. Strengthening of Children's book trust that aims to promote the production of well written, well illustrated and well designed, enjoyable and inspirational books for children will also give the momentum to reach goals of NEP2020.

To serve the community and the students, particularly in villages, the government has proposed to set up ICT-equipped physical school/public libraries at the ward or panchayat level with all necessary infrastructure. That will help the students access the resources of the National Digital Library.

Without a doubt, the establishment of the National Digital Library of India, the adoption of the New Education Policy 2020, and the aforementioned actions being taken to achieve the goal of NEP 2020 will promote a culture of reading and make books more accessible and available in all the regional languages of country to the underprivileged community. We anticipate more initiatives like this to improve education and reading culture across the nation.

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