HRD Minister Releases Report on Reading Habits of North-East Youth Compared to All India, NE States Fare Better

Union Human Resource Development Minister Dr M M Pallam Raju says reading habits face a real challenge in the world of TV and internet. The Minister said this while releasing a report Youth of North-East India: Demographics and Readership in New Delhi today, in the presence of Minister of State for HRD, Sh Jitin Prasada. Driving home the point of the need for people, especially the young, to read  more Dr Pallam Raju said reading as a habit grows in a conducive ecosystem, where libraries, book shops and teacher encouragement play an important role.

The Report attempts to give an analytical and detailed account of the reading habits of the literate youth in the north-eastern states and their exposure to different forms of media, and how diverse socio-economic and motivational factors impact their reading habit. The reading of ‘leisure or non-text books’ among the literate youth is the special focus of the study.

Some of the salient features of the report are

• As compared to all India, the performance of the north-eastern states is much superior. In fact, the north-eastern region has performed much better than Maharashtra, which is the topmost state of the country in terms of economic well-being. The results reveal that the NAGMAMI ( Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram) region is at the top slot with 67 percent (85% urban, 59% rural) readers followed by Assam with 41 percent (55% urban, 38% rural), showing that these NE states are far ahead of Maharashtra with 34 percent (39% urban, 28% rural) readers. The ‘rest of the NE states’ and the ‘rest of the states’ are at the bottom of the table with only 24 percent and 23 percent readers respectively in these regions
• The north-eastern states of India, despite their economic backwardness, have a greater proportion of readers among its youth population. The survey results reveal that in the north-eastern states, 43 percent of the youth are readers. While the central states have the largest block (85%) of non-readers, the north-east has the smallest (57%).
• It is noticed that the north-eastern region has the highest proportion of literate youth hailing from rural areas, while in the remaining parts of India, the concentration of literate youth is more towards urban.
• In Assam, the highest percentage of rural youth (41%) considers the subject of the book as the most important deciding factor. The other important considerations are ‘author profile’ and ‘price’ as viewed by 26 percent and 17 percent youth respectively (Table 4.27). However, in other NE states, price of the book is the most important factor (52%) while purchasing leisure books, followed by subject (16%) and author profile (13%). For rural Maharashtra, subject is the most important weighing factor as viewed by 38 percent youth, the next important factor being price which has only a marginal amount of higher support over the author profile (22% vs 19%). The youth from the ‘rest of the states’ has expressed a more convincing opinion – that subject (30%) and author profile (27%) are the two most important weighing factors, price can only be the third factor (25%)

The Report is a follow-up study of the National Youth Readership Survey (2009-10) assigned to National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) by the NBT under the National Action Plan for the Readership Development among the Youth (NAPRDY) mooted by NBT. In order to have a better understanding of the status of the North-Eastern (NE) states as compared to the rest of country in this sector, the findings are compared with the similar result for one developed state (Maharashtra) and one economically backward state (Bihar), chosen on the basis of their per capita gross domestic product. This is over and above the comparison of the findings in respect of the NE states with the overall Indian situation.

Sh M A Sikandar, Director , NBT, Advisory panel members and representatives from NCAER were present on the occasion.