New Delhi, July 14, 2022: The Ten News Network had the great pleasure to talk with Dr. H. Chaturvedi, the Director of the Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH). He talked about the most challenging phase of his life. He talked about the social initiative started by BIMTECH to open libraries in prisons.
In 2011, Dr. Chaturvedi visited the Gautam Buddha Nagar prison with his friend, Dr. Viresh Sharma, who was a jail superintended. “We have seen that the infrastructure was good for keeping them in a neat and hygienic place, but there was no facility for entertainment except for some television sets in big prison halls. So, hundreds of people live in one hall and one small television set,” he described. “We thought why there is no library. It is a fact that there are no libraries even right now except in 12 jails where we have set up libraries which include Lucknow, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Meerut, Mathura, Agra, Bhubaneshwar, etc.”
Dr. Chaturvedi explained that the libraries comprise 2000 Hindi books which include stories, novels, religious texts, and books for passing out high school and +12. “This set of 2000 books was kept in some almirahs, and we have also computerized the process of issuing and receiving the books. One computer was provided, and we trained prison inmates having long stays there, convicted, to tackle the issue and return the books.”
“I myself went to many places but Dr. Rishi Tiwari has been managing it who has been working with us a long time and he managed setting up all these libraries,” he said. “We have been supported by some very progressive-minded IPS officers.”
“It has been observed by jail authorities that by using the jail library violent scuffles and incidents have reduced and even the suicide numbers in inmates have seen a sizeable decline,” he stated.
