BOOKS OR REELS? - AN INTENSE DEBATE BY DAAK BANGLA

🖊️Arpita Roy

On the 5th day of the International Kolkata Book Fair, a very interesting debate took place inside the SBI Auditorium. The debate, organised by the electronic book publishing company Daak Bangla, was on the topic “Ek Minute er Reel er jonnye Uponnasher aar kodor nei” (Respect towards books has been replaced by 1 minute Reels). The panelists comprised esteemed dignitaries such as Shri Tridib Chattopadhyay, Shri Prochet Gupto, Mr. Srijato, RJ Somak, Shri Indranil Sanyal and Smt. Debjani Basu Kumar.

 

When great literary minds meet, the debate too has an enriching affect on the minds of the audience. Before the debate commenced, the MD of Techno India Group and Chancellor Sister Nivedita University Satyam Roychowdhury spoke highly of Daak Bangla and the moderator Smt. Sanchari Mukhopadhyay.

 

The debate started with witty and challenging statements about how social media is taking over every generation of people. “Whenever there is a launch of a new social media platform, the writers get tensed” said Mr. Srijato while explaining further that in this fast paced society when something is so easy and less time consuming, people lose interest in more intellectual things which take time to internalise and absorb like reading books.

 

Panelists also argued that people nowadays are busy with their work lives and stressed in their personal lives and to relax among that constant cacophony, watching 15 secs reels in their free time is much more desirable than sitting down with a book. “Audiobooks which take the contents from physical books are gaining much more popularity due to them being more time efficient. People don’t get enough time to sit down with a physical book which makes them miss out on the real experience”, expressed Smt. Debjani Basu Kumar.

 

The tone of the debate changed when a speaker expressed a strong disagreement to the topic of debate itself, “It is not that people care highly about something they consume on a daily basis and they don’t respect books if they don’t read them. Nobody forgets the literary impact of Rabindranath Tagore’s books on everyone even if people choose fast internet content over reading books. Hence, nobody will respect the content reels provide over literature. If people really care, the respect to literature will prevail,” RJ Somak walked to the podium to present his views which started with focusing on the point that ‘Reels’ are merging respective audiovisual and texts for the content seeking public.

 

Instead of criticising the so called ‘reel culture’, we should differentiate between the good and bad content. Not every reel is degenerating and some of them actually distribute good content, be it of any genre. He also pointed out that marketing of books is very poorly done which makes books quite a niche habit. Books are often sold but never marketed to the people who find them intriguing. But on the other hand, social media has a fantastic way of reaching out to the audience which makes people choose that over buying and reading books. He boldly asked, “People wait for this book fair to take place but does this book fair try to reach out to book readers during the rest of the year?

 

Social media keeps their users entertained and engaged on a daily basis, every minute. This lack of marketing is also a reason why people are not attracted to the idea of reading books”. This point was made more concrete by other panelists by discussing how Gen Z’s patience level is at the lowest among all generations and if something is not marketed rightly, they will lose interest in a second.

 

Other points like how books are getting movie and webseries renditions of them to bring the book-ish content out to the world also attained a common consensus among the panelists.

 

The debate which unfolded more like a discussion ended with the audience finalising the outcome. And it was quite obvious that very few people raised their hands for the motion.