Demand for books on Anna goes up

“From our Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Andolan trust we have so far printed three books,including the one on RTI,The Second Freedom Struggle and another one called My Village – My Sacred Land,also written by Anna. We have not given them to any commericial distributors. We sell them ourselves wherever we go on protests. This helps us keep the cost low and affordable,” said Pathare.

Now,the demand is all set to overtake supply as Pathare has been inundated with requests for copies. “A few non-government organisations from Tamil Nadu,Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have approached us and want to print these books after translating them in the vernacular languages of their respective regions. The other day,a man wanted to order 50 copies of Anna’s biography after seeing a co-passenger read it in train,” says Pathare.

City bookstores have seen an increase in the demand of books not just written by Anna,but also by others. Upendra Dixit,proprietor,International Bookstore,at Deccan Corner said,“In the last one week we have sold at least 10-15 copies of two such books written by Anna. We have run out of stock and have placed orders for about 15 more copies each.” However,Dixit has his fingers crossed,as he feels that after “the media frenzy dies down”,the sale will be back to normal. So he does not want to order in excess.

At Popular Book House on Fergusson College Road,there have been a large number of queries about Anna Books in the last week. “There are more books in Marathi in the markets than English or Hindi. We have had quite a few customers requesting for English books. We have placed an order for three books published by Diamond Books and we expect the stock to arrive by next Thursday,” said Sunil Gadgil of Popular Book House.

Pathare sent about 2,000 books to New Delhi for the protests and after a substantial number of copies got sold,demand for more was placed.