EN DESK Arunachal Pradesh, Breaking News!!

Students in Tawang Build Community Library to Cultivate Reading Culture

In an effort to cultivate a reading culture and inspire the locals to read, the youth belonging to a remote India-China border town of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh put their minds at work and turned masons & carpenters to build a community library by dismantling an old and dilapidated government structure. Once completed the Library will be named after former Chief Minister, the late Dorjee Khandu, as a tribute to him for his contributions to Arunachal’s overall development.

The work was executed in 40 days and students of around 15 universities, colleges and school students had lent their service.“Tawang being a remote district, books are a rarity here. We also observed that not many people read books these days. So, we wanted to inspire them to get back to their reading habit and develop it among youth,” said Pema Tsering, who is a student leader and in-charge of the library construction committee.

Built at a cost of around Rs 6.5 lakh, the library is half concrete and half wooden with its roofing done with CGI sheets. “It will not be like any other library in the state. It will primarily have inspirational books, comics etc for children. Many students have started donating used books. Some social media users and others expressed the willingness to donate books, Tsering said. We have no doubt the youth will get inspired and develop the habit of reading books. We will hand the library over to the state’s education department for its better management, he added.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu, praised the students for their great initiative and tweeted: “Students from #Tawang worked together to build this beautiful #CommunityLibrary. The entire construction work of reinforcing, shuttering, carpentry, masonry, roofing etc were all done by students. Due to hardworking environment, average youths here possess such work skills.”