The National Library is knee-deep in mess, and not merely because of the certainty with which monsoon waters find their way into this citadel of learning every year. Even without nature’s conspiracy, its circumstances are murky enough to raise a stink. The largest library in India, the institution today is a popular venue for industrial meets and government functions. It often requires the authority of no less than the chief minister to remind its users of its actual function — to serve as a repository of knowledge and a promoter of scholarship. Thus its annual flooding somehow fails to surprise, as does the chain of human reactions afterwards. The entry of the waters into the newly-built Bhasha Bhavan this year has seen the same promptness in covering up priceless books and written documents with plastic sheets, and the same passion in the trading of charges between the library administration and the public works department as last year. The flooding here may be owing to faulty construction, but the misfortune of this historic institution is not only in the leaking air-conditioners or the voraciousness of insect life. It lies in the way its value is perceived by those who manage it and those who use it.

It is most unfortunate that the library continues to be a victim of callous management despite being identified as an institution of national importance and a top tourist attraction in Calcutta, along with the Indian Museum. Its control rests with the Centre, which has seldom taken a healthy interest in its running. The apathy, like rain-water, has seeped into the staff who have shown remarkable nonchalance towards the upkeep of the institution and the preservation of its treasures. The destruction of invaluable material under its care is now so routine that it fails to make headlines. Vacant posts are not filled, nor lending systems modernized and funds utilized to the right end. It is the same indifference that determines the state government’s management of the archives. The regularity with which the National Library premises is abused by the public and the government shows how oblivious both are to its importance. The responsibility for the steady decline of the library should also be shared by an uncaring public, which makes no demand on the management for better services and the proper preservation of their heritage.