2.5 Lakh Visitors In Just 100 Days, Kalaignar Centenary Library’s Feat

The biggest gift to Madurai given by the Dravidian Model government is the Kalaignar Centenary library which had over 2.5 lakh visitors since its inauguration in the month of July. According to Minister for School Education Anbil Mahesh, in a city such as Madurai, people flocking to visit the library is a rare thing.

To celebrate the completion of 100 days of inauguration, the School Education minister recently visited the library with school children, arrangements for which were done by the Kalaignar News channel.

During the trip with the minister, one of the students asked him about his friendship with Udhayanidhi Stalin, the sports minister. Anbil Mahesh replied, "This friendship has continued for 3 generations, from the days of my grandfather and Kalaignar, then my father and CM Stalin, now me and Udhayanidhi Stalin.

Udhayanidhi Stalin becoming the Sports Minister was convenient for me to request and purchase instantly the sports equipment needed for schools. In many ways, sports is closely related to education, realising that former CM Karunanidhi made sports and education as separate departments necessitating two ministers to handle them as opposed to the earlier case where one minister handled both."

Regarding the establishment of the Kalaignar library in Madurai, the Minister said, "The inauguration ceremony of the library coincided with the birth anniversary of former CM of Tamil Nadu K. Kamaraj i.e. on 15.07.2023.

Kalaignar Karunanidhi, the former CM of Tamil Nadu, declared July 15 as Educational Development day and established a library under Annadurai's name in Chennai. Now, the current CM of Tamil Nadu M. K. Stalin established a library in Madurai under Kalaignar's name.

The day we showed the place to CM for the construction of the library is still fresh in my memory. It became dark when we showed him the place, so lights were set up to brighten the place so that CM could look around.

Public Works minister A. V. Velu devoted himself day and night and held many consultative meetings with the Department of School Education regarding the needs and to provide facilities which are not available in Anna centenary library in Chennai. CM Stalin also kept on inquiring about the works related to the library such as purchase of books, different genre of books to be kept in the library etc. His engagement accelerated the speed with which works had been carried out in the library.

The expectation is that the library in Madurai will benefit the students in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. As expected, the library is well utilised by the students of Madurai, Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli and Trichy. Within 100 days of inauguration, the library is visited by approximately 2 lakh people. It is not just surprising but an achievement that people from out of town are flocking to Madurai to visit a place such as a library.

The library contains many unique features such as an art gallery containing photos purchased from London depicting the city of Madurai and its culture, a separate section for differently abled persons, a section of audio books for competitive exams with seating arrangement catering to the needs of the aspirants and a section of wooden sculptures, thus creating a field of art and knowledge which is interesting for the younger generation.

In the absence of interesting facilities, the younger generation's attention is diverted to distracting things. It is wiser to create a captivating avenue for the younger generation to learn rather than just advising them. Like this many thoughts are hiding behind the creation of the Madurai library.

The first floor of the library is the children's section, a colourful room which contains seats named after Tamil alphabets and lights designed to attract children. There is also a digital room with a touch screen which shows the functioning of the whole human body as well as each organ separately. It also contains a digital screen to practice writing and a home theatre to visually describe scientific objects.

Special care was given not to make the children's section as another classroom. Some enlightening ideas were taken from the San Francisco library which is way smaller than ours", said the Minister.