My New E-book: “I want to know about…India, its States and Cities”
Living in Tenkasi, during the last several years, I had been interacting with several groups of school children through my Youth Development programs. One impression I had been gaining was that several of these children – even from the matriculation schools - had lacked much awareness about anything outside the immediate place of their living. These rural children’s ideas about India, its several states and cities – with regard to its heredity, culture, history, current status and the future potential are generally perfunctory and need a lot of improvement. I had conducted regular classes on “India, its states and cities” for the children of the government-run middle schools. I had also conducted Quiz competitions on the same topic. These efforts had motivated at least some of these children learn more about our country. Besides, these rural children also suffer due to the lack of an easy access to any comprehensive information about our country, though some information is always available in their text books, in bits and pieces. Not many read newspapers regularly too, thanks to the television media which is loaded too much in favor of commercial film and politics based programs. And, there is also very little motivation or encouragement for knowledge seeking among these rural children.
I had also been traveling to U.S.A regularly. Here, the young children have easy access to information through the internet. They get any information they want. However, there is also a lot of obsession among the children about computer video games and entertainment provided by several websites like YouTube. The children of Non-resident Indian parents too lack much information about India, except those provided to them by their parents. There is a vast amount of information about India on the internet, yet not available comprehensively to the school going children. I have found the children outside India are quite keen to know about India.
These two paradoxes – on one extreme, children have very little knowledge and access to information, and on the other, children wanting to know about India comprehensively – motivated me to think of preparing a comprehensive book on India, its states and cities.
So, I have now come out with a series of books, rather five volumes, under the title: “I Want To Know About…India, its states and cities”. They are comprehensive picture based E-books. I won’t call them exhaustive. They are more introductory. Quite a lot of information and pictures in one place, on India. Yet, something that could motivate the young children to research and find more information on specific areas and topics they would be further interested in, about India.
The first volume, which gives an overview about India is ready for publication. This will be available as an E-book in the next few days. The remaining four volumes will be on Eastern India, Western India, Himalayan India and Central India. I intend to publish all of them in the next couple of weeks. The idea is: the children in India can read these books during their forthcoming annual school vacation. Besides, I also intend conducting Quiz programs on India, its states and cities, for the middle school children in Tirunelveli District, sometime during July, 2016 and this E-book will be handy for them.
I hope the book will be useful to the primary and middle school level children in India and outside. I have kept the introductory price of the E-book at a modest level. Just Rs.100/- per volume. That too, the money I receive, selling these books will go towards social and charitable activities of my L. N. Charitable Trust. Though, the book is a priced edition to begin with, over time, I intend making it available in electronic format at very much subsidized cost for the children of government and government-aided schools in Tamil Nadu. Printing these books might be a very costly affair and I might not venture into it unless some publisher is willing to take it up.
I exhort you all to buy my books and gift it to your children and friends. Books are great gifts to your children.
Please let me know how you felt about the books. Please write to me at: neelkant16@yahoo.com
Best wishes to all children.
T.N.Neelakantan
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