Grow By Reading: A conversation with Umesh Malhotra

Last week I had a conversation with Umesh Malhotra. Umesh, an Ashoka fellow is the Chief Executive Director of Hippocampus Reading Foundation. Hippocampus' vision is to "inspire children to want to read more." Their "Grow By Reading" program is an activity based program that enables kids to assess their own reading levels, excites them to read books, improve their reading skills and overall become better citizens.

When I talked to Umesh, I could see his anguish at the current state of children; and his excitement at the possibilities that his reading program has to offer them. Here is a "paraphrased transcript" of my conversation with Umesh. I have edited it for brevity, while keeping the overall content and message intact.

Suriya Subramanian [SS]: What is your background and how did you get into the non-profit sector?
Umesh Malhotra [UM]: I was in the IT sector for close to 12 years. After I finished from IIT-Madras, I joined Infosys in 1990, when it was still a fledgling company. In 1999, I started my own firm called Bangalore Labs. In 2002, I had the chance to sell my firm to a Singaporean. I was looking at what next in life.

In 1998-99, when we were in the US, my son was 5 years old. We were enamored by the public library system in the US. We felt that if India wants to be a leader in the economy, is it too much to expect India to have a good library system? In 2002, my wife Vimala was working on this project of starting a library, and I decided to join her. That led to Hippocampus.

SS: How did the library take off?
UM: We started Hippocampus in March 2003. We wanted to a library that would be economically sustainable. We did what we thought was needed. We came up with a model where we said, for example, malls have events at their facility to attract children, we felt we would have to do something similar.

We viewed libraries as completely vibrant spaces that are competing for a child's leisure time, with television, playstation, or malls. We did that, and we were successful. From month one we were cash flow positive.

SS: What were your next steps?
UM: After six months, we asked, are children in poor families willing to read? We partnered with other NGOs and found the response from even the poorest child very positive. They too wanted to read books, look at the pictures.

SS: Did you face any issues with children lacking reading skills?
UM: We found that these children were not fluent readers. They were not even competent, and had to address this issue. We did various things and ended up with a program Grow by reading. This is an activity-based program. We assess their reading levels and assign appropriate books and help them gain confidence in their reading skills. This program is now active in 60 government schools.

SS: Are these schools only in Bangalore?
UM: It has taken us about two years to learn, and six to eight months to develop this program and a year to launch it. We believe we are ready to expand it to other cities. We are talking to people in Mysore and other cities.

SS: What is the primary language of the program?
UM: We operate in poorer communities where the main language is the mother tongue. In Bangalore we operate in Kannada and English. English is the second language in most school. We are currently developing the program in Urdu, and will expand to Tamil in the future.

SS: What is the cost of setting up a library and what are your sources of funding?
UM: Setting up a library is a collaborative effort. We partner with NGOs who have grassroots contacts and networks. If we were to set up this program in five hundred districts, we'd become the Government of India. We view us as agents of change. We realize we can't do it on our own. Local NGOs raise funds in their communities to set up the program. They have to believe in this program and feel ownership.

To set up a library for about 300 children it costs about Rs 25,000/- to buy books. The running cost is about Rs 4,000/- a month, provided the government provides space. This is to pay the librarian who is a dedicated person, or a teacher in the school. Our program cost --- training, supervision and mentoring --- works to about Rs 15,000/- a year.

SS: How qualified does the librarian need to be?
UM: We have created the program assuming that we will not be able to get high quality people as librarians. They need not be a qualified librarian or even a teacher. They need an enthusiastic person who knows to read and write the language. Typically we work with people who have just finished their 10th or 12th. We train and mentor them. We have managed to create about 30 librarians who can walk in to any school and do a fantastic job.

SS: Can you comment about the reading levels of children in general?
UM: Children in 1st standard should be able to read something like "Hoe and Poe are two dogs." This is level 1. We find that, only half are able to read this. Even in 5th standard there are 40% of students still stuck at the level 1 reading level, in government schools in India. They have not progressed in school at all. Less than 5% in any class can read age-appropriate text.

We do not focus on children who cannot even read at level 1. We leave it other organizations like Pratham to do that. We want to take children from level 1 and take them to "Raja and Rani went to the jungle and met a tiger ..., " and so on. That is the type change we are focussing on.

SS: How can other organizations benefit from your expertize in this area?
UM: We welcome any organization to adopt our program. Initially we play a supervisory role. We then mentor them for two years, and would like them to take care of it on their own. If there is considerable interest, we can even get working in a new language in three to four months time. We are in talks with an organization in Tamil Nadu that wants to set up 100 libraries in 100 schools.

SS: Do you collaborate with the government? How successful are you?
UM: There is some interaction. Though change is slow to happen. We have talked about reviving the public library infrastructure. We are meeting with the Director of Public Libraries this week. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome, but let us see how it goes.

SS: Can you tell me about how you became an Ashoka fellow?
UM: The Ashoka Foundation tracks people to see how they are performing. I got an email and met with them casually about two years ago. This is something social entrepreneurs won't know of. That someone is tracking you, seeing how you are doing.

It took them two years to get back to me again, and they asked me to fill up a form apply for a Asoka Fellowship. It was about forty pages long, and took me two weeks. Then there were two rounds of interviews, approval by the national board, and then by the international board. It is a long process.

SS: Can you say about people around you, and who are most important for your efforts to succeed?
UM: Number one is our team. We have a great team of individuals how have stayed with us. This helped us focus on the actual task and not on knowledge transfer. Next is our network of partners. Finally, the most important people are the community of book publishers. We need to reach out to them. Publishing in local languages in India is non-existent.

SS: You mean, for children, right?
UM: Even for adults. Look at the size of Tamil Nadu and the number of books. Compare this to the number of books the French do. Even if they do not have original content, they have lots translated books. That does not happen here. We do not have an active publishing industry.

We are still focussed on Thiruvalluvar. We need to move on. If you and I were brought up on Shakespeare we would never read English. Even the medium is changing. Things are becoming more and more visual. Publishers and writers need to be sensitized, to keep up with the times. Look at how the film industry has changed. The language used in MGR and Shivaji Ganesan films are not used by Rajinikanth today. Local language publishers are not evolving, like how English publishers have.

SS: Thank you Umesh for taking the time.
UM: Thanks to you too.