Chandigarh: Parents rush to city bookstores ahead of new academic session

Tribune News Service

Deepankar Sharda

Chandigarh, March 18

As the new academic session is going to start next month, local bookstores have already started witnessing rush of parents coming to buy books for their wards.

Every year, hundreds of parents queue-up at local bookstores to buy books for their wards. In order to avoid hassle, several bookstores have started delivering books online, while others have already prepared a complete set of books to deliver to customers at the earliest.

“Parents can also order books online and the complete set gets delivered on their doorstep. Parents have already started coming to buy books and we are doing every possible thing to make the process smooth,” said Sunil Arora, owner, Popular Book Store, Sector 22.

Vivek Manchanda, owner of Manchanda Book Store, Sector 19, said: “We extend working hours at our shop and parents can also order books online. We are here to serve customers and try our best to avoid any hassle.”

“We have limited stock of books with us. However, we still try to make things easy for parents. We are already with the set of books and hand it over to parents in no time,” said Sudhir Puri, owner of Modern Book Store, Sector 22.

Monopoly or coincidence!

While bookstore owners try to make buying books a hassle-free process, questions have always been raised regarding the cost of books and their availability at a particular shop. In 2018, the UT Education Department had directed schools to prescribe only NCERT books for all subjects, except language and mathematics for Classes I and II, and language, EVS and mathematics for Classes III to V. However, parents claimed that private schools continue to prescribe extra books.

“This is an annual affair and the authorities remain numb over it. The cost of books starts from Rs 1,100 (pre-nursery) and goes up to nearly Rs 4,100 (till Class 10). Different schools have different curriculum and the cost of these books vary according to schools,” said a parent seeking anonymity.

Notably, it has been observed that the main bookstores of the city already have their tie-up with different schools and the set of books remain available with them. There are certain schools, which have their sets of books costing over Rs 7,000 for Class 8 (with and without and without a language subject).

“One can easily see the cost of books on their (shopkeepers) website. Some bookshops have their tie-up with over 10 schools of the tricity and the rush of parents can be expected in such sanitation. All parents are not comfortable with ordering books online by paying some extra charges,” said another parent. Though the Education Department claims that parents are free to buy textbooks from anywhere, books prescribed by each school are available at only selected shops, claimed another parent.

Schools upload details of books

A majority of the schools upload details of books as per the curriculum on their respective websites. However, there’s no mention of where to buy books or pricing of these books.

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