David Blackie

Thank you for responding. Feel free to do whatever you want.

The British Council is, I think, an arrogant, and self-centred, organisation - certainly that has been my experience. It is entirely typical that their officers say what a wonderful job a library is doing, and then, because they see an opportunity for saving or making money (or both), close it down. They enjoy diplomatic status, when they are not diplomats, and they enjoy charitable status when - realistically - the organisation is not a charity. They operate as a business without being a business. What they don't like is people drawing all this to the attention of others, and I urge you to make as much fuss as possible (they clearly didn't do enough in Lucknow 10 years ago), and use all your powers of persuasion. They say they are closing down libraries to come up with programmes for more people - well, what are these programmes? Do they mean yet another web site which will cost a fraction of the library, get lots of hits but actually be of no value to anybody? Or what? Libraries, like books, are valued all over the world - and you have made it clear that you value them more than most. So make sure everybody knows, write to the Indian High Commissioner in London, the Foreign Secretary, the Publishers Association and your own politicians and keep it in the news, and don't stop until you get a result!

Keep up the fight!

David