Itanagar Book Festival begins

Itanagar, Mar 30(UNI) The week-long Itanagar Boook Festival started here today with Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU) Vice-Chancellor Professor S C Saha formally inaugurating the fair.

Organised by National Book Trust(NBT), in collaboration with RGU and the Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation(CCRD), the festival would contribute immensely towards making educative books available at affordable rates.

Besides the NBT, around 25 publishers from across the length and breadth of the country have arrived here with a wide range of books to exhibit and sell them to its lovers offering a discount of 10 per cent, according to Manas Ranjan Mahapatra of NBT.

Now in its golden jubilee year, the NBT was set up in 1957 under the visionary leadership of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru for promoting books and reading habits in the country.

The festival was part of its nation-wide programmes under the guidance of NBT chairman Prof Bipan Chandra and director Nuzhat Hassan to popularise books and reading habits.

The capital city would witness a range of intellectual activities throughout the festival, which would include a range of activities for school children like workshops and competitions on book illustrations and designs, cover and poster designs, rewriting folk tales, story telling, book review techniques, design of book fair newspapers and treasure hunt.

The youths would be able to participate in a workshop on creative writing, an open forum on reading and impact of television, a career counseling session and a meet-the-authors programme in which noted writers Mamang Dai and Y D Thongchi would interact with young people.

A North East young poets' meet was also in the offing at 3 pm on April five.

UNI