Visitors at book fair in Patna last year

The long wait is almost over for bibliophagists.

Scheduled from November 7 to 18, the 20th Patna book fair will be focused on children and women with the theme being chosen — “child awareness and women representation”. With more than 930 stalls and 2,000 participants, the fair has already received more than 230 entries.

Compared with the last edition of the book fair, this one would be on a grand scale and extensive. “This year, we have tried to make the fair more reachable among book lovers. The responses of publishers are quite good and the stalls are filling fast. The numbers are expected to exceed 400 by the closing date November 2,” said Ratneshwar, convener of the fair.

The fair would have a wide variety of books, ranging from fiction, non-fiction, reference books, law to social sciences and biopic of national and international authors, among others. The publishers who have confirmed their participation include Sage Publishers, Raj Kamal Prakashan, Prakashan Sansthan, Pustak Mahal, Raja Pocket Books, Sangeet Natak Akademi and Hathras.

Organised by the Centre for Readership Development like every year, the fair will be held at Gandhi Maidan. Taking lessons from the Ravan Vadh stampede, this year’s fair would focus on strict crowd management.

“Every year, during weekends the fair becomes over crowded. We have barricaded key areas and the initial point of entry of the crowd needs to be managed well. Apart from the security guards, we have increases the number of volunteers inside the campus of the fair. The volunteers will keep checking on the behaviour and need of the crowd,” added Ratneshwar.

One of the senior district administration officials added that all the organisers of fairs and other cultural programmes have been asked to manage crowd after the stampede, which claimed 33 lives. It has been observed that thousands of people throng the fair every day with the footfall increasing during the weekend.

Like every year, the entry of the students will be free. The college students will be allowed free entry by showing their college identity card except on Sundays and public holidays. The fair will open from 12 noon to 8pm on the week days and 11am to 9pm.

Introducing features, the fair’s cultural programme, Lok Sanskritik Pradarshan, will be organised by Sangeet Natak Akademi and a new prize, Yakshini Award for Art, will honour the artistes. “Artistes across the country will participate in the cultural programme. This folk and cultural programme of the fair will be an amalgamation of the Indian culture across the country,” added Ratneshwar.

Lok Sanskritik Pradasrshan will be held between 6.30pm and 7.30pm daily.

Samaj, an initiative and programme taken by the fair, will comprise awareness on social issues. The people will be informed about their rights, legal solution and health by a group formed by the book fair committee.

There is a current of enthusiasm among the book lovers of the capital after the announcement of the dates.

Ravish Keshab, first-year student of Patna University, has started making his list of books. “I have saved from my picket money to buy my favourite books from last one year. I am really excited about the fair. I’m also preparing my friends to take them along to the annual fair. I love the book fair’s bioscope segment, where they screen movies,” said Ravish.

This year bioscope will screen critically acclaimed films from different regional languages, including Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati.

Even some of the publishers also sounded quite enthusiastic in putting up a stall at the book fair.

“We look forward to Patna book fair as this one offers us the maximum mileage in terms of profit out of books in Hindi. We take part in book fairs in Calcutta, Delhi and other big cities also, but this one has a different charm,” said a marketing executive of a national-level publisher on condition of anonymity.