Changing strategies for changing needs- Mr Rajiv Tambe

Children’s author, Mr Rajiv Tambe spoke to Shyamala Shanmugasundaram after being felicitated recently by the government of Maharastra for his contribution to children's literature.

Stressing on the need for change in attitude and approach to promotion of children books, Mr. Tambe first spoke about the need for children authors to step out of their comfort zone. “Even the biggest film stars like Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan step out and promote their films. Why should children authors hesitate to go out and promote their books?”

Since literacy is the first step  towards promoting children books, he highlighted on the need for the print media to create child friendly content. He shared his successful efforts in bringing transformation in the regional newspapers of Maharastra. He was instrumental in getting the leading Marathi newspaper, Lokmat to dedicate a page to children in the local editions of their newspaper.  The experiment started with dedicating one page a week. Today the newspaper offers local news related to children’s world thrice a week.  Inspired, by Lokmat, the other regional newspapers have followed suit.

Lamenting about the state of children’s pages in some newspapers, Mr. Tambe said, “The children pages are designed by people who don’t understand child’s psychology.  Free material is downloaded straight from the internet to fill up space instead of providing any value addition to the children. Material should be designed by children for children.”  Recently, he had teamed up with the Marathi newspaper, Loksatta and provided three day training to children to create content for the upcoming vacation.

Disparity in payment and treatment of children authors was also acknowledged by the author. “While recognition from government is welcome, the rest of the society also needs to acknowledge and encourage efforts of those working in the field of children’s literature.  Even though everyone agrees writing for children is a challenging task, children’s literature has not got the recognition it truly deserves. Currently children authors are paid half the prize money awarded to writers of other genres.”

In spite of all the existing challenges, Mr. Tambe envisions a bright future for children books with the combined efforts of government, publishers and authors.