Self-help Tsunami

When I got to know that a westerner was surprised to see the titles in an Indian bookstore I was curious. He was surprised by store’s extensive focus on business and non-fiction books. This is in sharp contrast to what a typical western bookstore is selling.
If Crossword is a good sample then I must confess that his observation was precise. The Indian book reader seems to be on a self-help & non-fiction spree.
A quick look at the sections and the titles being promoted reveals that we are reading a whole lot of business books. Be it finance, marketing, HR or operations; books on HOW TO sell, crack that job interview, grow faster, get that corner office, SPEAK ENGLISH and a lot more, the list is endless.

While most of the ‘non-textbooks’ have traditionally been bought for leisure reading, we have a new crop of readers who started reading books (other than text books) much later in life, They have not been brought up on the Famous Five, Hardy Boys, Enid Blyton etc as kids and have not read Ayn Rand, Sydney Sheldon etc. as youth or young adults. They started much later (late 20s or early 30s) and their decision to read books was a result of realization that if they have to get ahead in their profession/occupation – they need to know more than what their qualification (Engineer or CA or anything else) taught them. Thus began the journey of adopting a new habit – reading books that help.
You’d find these 20/30 something in suburban trains/buses, immersed in Shiv Khera’s You can win or Covey’s 7 habits or The 8th habit, while clutching the overhead handles as the laptop bag hangs from their shoulder over the crumpled blue shirt. I also see them in the long and winding boarding queues at airport terminals.
These are, as some consumer behaviour books and demo/psychographic surveys call, ‘the aspirers’.

Equally interesting is the attitude of these aspirers towards the reading habits of their children. Instead of focusing only on the textbooks (like they once themselves did) these parents want their children to read fiction. Why? Because they believe that a lot of English early in life, be it in the form of reading, talking, at school, or with a teacher, or interaction with a more well-traveled and proficient uncle/aunt has therapeutic properties. It prepares you for the world outside the classroom and the world beyond Indian shores.

I do not know why but I can’t help thinking about China’s one child policy in this context. Out there it was a Govt. regulation not have more than one child, in India, it seems, parents have self-imposed the ‘Must Learn English Language’ policy on their kids.

In this future full of aspirer households, I am curious about the future of light/leisure reading & regional and the National languages. We just might be moving to a non-Hindi urban India in another 10-15 years where the preferred mode of interpersonal communication becomes English and reading, among aspirers, becomes predominantly non-fiction.
For every trend there could easily be a niche counter trend and I won’t be surprised to see mushrooming of training institutes that promise to groom children or grandchildren of these aspirers in the ‘innocence and originality of our mother tongue’ be it Hindi or our native language.

Also, these hyper-ambitious adults might look at different leisure activities (viz. going out, doing something) in their free time, instead of staying home & reading fiction.

Again there could be a niche counter trend to this that could, well, be about staying home or going to a reading lounge (not library), where you meet like-minded people, discuss and debate ideas, concepts from what they are reading or thinking..
Hyper-speculative I’d say but very likely.