Duina Barbaruah
(dwinakashyap@gmail.com)
In the digital age, when the printed word has come under threats and challenges, the Government of Assam’s decision to celebrate ‘2025 as Year of Books’ is praiseworthy. In the 2025-2026 Assam Budget, the Government of Assam, with a view to fostering a vibrant book culture, announced a slew of initiatives to augment the growth of literature and encourage greater public engagement with books.
As a part of this initiative, Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma distributed books to journalists at a function held in Guwahati to mark the New Year. The government will give Rs 25,000 each to 1,000 young writers, with a focus on those contributing to creative, scientific, and academic writing.
Another laudable decision taken is that all official gifts at government functions will be books. That is not all. A one-time grant of Rs 1,000 will be given to all government employees to purchase books. The government will provide financial assistance for organising Granth Mela (Book Fair) approved by the Assam Prakashan Parishad with Rs. 5 lakh allocated for the district and Rs. 2.5 lakh each for co-district headquarters.
District libraries are being renovated and spruced up and stacked with new books to woo more and more youths to books.
Chief Minister Dr Sarma has given the clarion call to the people of the state to adopt the culture of gifting books at personal functions like birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and special occasions to promote reading across society. All these steps are in the right direction given the proliferation of the digital formats, whether they be books or online editions of newspapers and other publications.
Here I would like to suggest to the government to provide books at subsidised rates so that more and more people get a chance to read a book. This will help to create a movement to promote reading culture in the society. Another step which I would like to put forth by way of suggestion to the government for consideration is organising an event dedicated to books and reading culture, such as ‘Assam Book and Reading Culture Day’, on a particular day every year.
Such an event will help to reaffirm the position, role, and importance of books in improving knowledge and skills; developing thinking; educating and training human personality; promoting and developing the reading movement in the state; motivating reading habits in families, schools and organisations; and contributing to building a learning society. On this day, books can be given to readers in far-flung and remote regions with a lack of bookshops or no library facility to foster the love and passion for reading.
When I was a school-going student, I remember vividly how excited I felt when my parents brought new books for me after getting promoted to the next grade. I used to quickly flip through the pages of new textbooks and took the ruler to remove the pages stuck together with caution and care. I also used to get immersed in smelling pages of a new book, a sensory delight, often described as ‘bibliosmia’.
Now in the digital age, when you can read anything just at the click of the mouse on your personal computer/laptop/e-pad or on your Android phone, or read a novel, fiction or non-fiction, or a book of any genre on Kindle, the intensity or craze for the printed word for the present generation, or Gen Next, is not the same as we felt in our days!
Writing itself has never been so popular, with blogs/vlogs increasing from 27 million to 133 million in the past 10 years. If you want to read, it’s never been easier; you can get your free daily news online, download every book known onto your device, and if you need to find something out, you ‘Google it!’.
Is the power of the printed word on the wane in the digital age? Or will the printed word continue to hold its place despite the spurt in digital platforms, thanks to the internet? Let us weigh in the pros and cons of the printed word and the digital version to arrive at a logical conclusion.
According to a study, reading print texts improves comprehension more than reading digital materials does.
Readers of print books vs e-books absorb and remember more of the plot, according to a 2014 study on print book retention. Print readers also scored higher in other areas, such as empathy, immersion in the book and overall understanding of the narrative.
Research has shown that printed books allow readers to engage more deeply with the content, improving comprehension and focus. Unlike e-books, which can be full of distractions like notifications or hyperlinks, printed books offer an uninterrupted reading experience that fosters better understanding. In addition, holding a book and flipping through the pages fosters a more immersive and meaningful experience, which is harder to replicate with digital formats.
Researchers at the University of Valencia analysed more than two dozen studies on reading comprehension published between 2000 and 2022, which assessed nearly 470,000 participants. Their findings suggest that print reading over a long period of time could boost comprehension skills six to eight times more than digital reading does.
Studies reveal that the association between frequency of digital reading for leisure and text comprehension abilities is close to 0. This is attributed to the fact that the ‘linguistic quality of digital texts tends to be lower than that traditionally found in printed texts’. Text on social media, for example, may be conversational and lack complex syntax and reasoning. The ‘reading mindset’ for digital texts also tends to be more shallow than that for printed materials, with scanning being more common. This can mean the reader ‘doesn’t fully get immersed in the narration or doesn’t fully capture the complex relations in an informative text’.
The study, published in the Review of Educational Research, also found that while there is a negative relationship between digital reading and comprehension for primary school students, the relationship turns positive for secondary school and undergraduate students.
Researchers suggest that this may be because young children are less able to navigate the distractions, such as incoming messages, that might come with reading on a digital device. We all know that our ability to regulate our cognition evolves during adolescence. Young children may not be fully equipped to self-regulate their activity during digital leisure reading.
The authors also said that young children engaging in frequent digital reading may learn less academic vocabulary ‘in a critical phase when they are shifting from learning to read to reading to learn’.
Studies have found that, in the US, print books are still far more popular than digital versions, and even that the most voracious print readers are young people – those so-called digital natives. In the UK, sales of printed books rose by 7% in 2016.
Despite this, in 2016, printed book sales actually rose in the UK by 3%, and ebook sales fell by over 2%. It seems there is a drive within the younger generations for the physical book. A story doesn’t translate onto a screen as it does on paper; you can feel the words and connect with them. You can take them with you in so many ways. One study of college students in the U.S., Slovakia, Japan and Germany showed that 92% of participants preferred actual books that they can hold and touch and leaf through whenever they please.
So what is it about the printed word that keeps us coming back for more? On the face of it, a page of prose has the same meaning on the screen of an eReader as it does on the page of a printed book. It’s just that with an eReader you can cart 500 novels, biographies and textbooks around in your rucksack.
But book lovers don’t care for such dry practicality. They simply love books. And most importantly, the first thing that keeps us wedded to the printed word is its aesthetic appeal, vis-à-vis the smell emanating from a paper and being able to feel a book when it is in your hand.
Books can be a ‘sensory delight’. When we handle a ‘real’ book, we react to how it feels in our hand, its smell, the look of the cover, its size, its height, its volume, and even the crisp sound from turning the pages.
The unbridled joy you feel when your eyes are riveted on the books lined up on the shelves and you take them down one by one. As we open them, we can recall not just the stories but incidents that took place in our lives at that point.
And there’s growing evidence that not only do we find printed words more aesthetically appealing, we also find them more memorable. Partly, that’s because print comes with fewer distractions – email notifications never pop up on the pages of a book – but it’s not the only reason.
Researchers have found that we absorb less when reading on a Kindle than we do when reading print. When Kindle and print readers were both given a short story to read, the digital group did significantly worse when asked to place events from the story in the correct order afterwards.
That has clear implications for learning, and we also tend to skim read on screen. So, it is more advisable and beneficial too for students to read their work in print.
Digital is undeniably great. But reading print is a different experience altogether from reading on screen. You skim less and focus more.
Electronic books can cause screen fatigue, which may lead to blurred vision, redness, dryness and irritation. With print books, you don’t have to worry about any of that. Studies suggest that using electronic devices like smartphones or tablets before sleep can interfere with your circadian rhythm due to blue light exposure. Printed books eliminate this problem.
So if you want to get a good night’s rest, stick with print.
Choosing print books can be beneficial for your brain, health and even the planet, especially when considering the impacts of e-waste.
Going in for printed books is also an environmentally conscious decision. Unlike e-readers, which require electronic components and contribute to e-waste, printed books come from renewable resources. With e-waste’s 22.3% recycling rate, you can feel good about choosing a print book – with paper having a much higher recycling rate (65-69%). Interestingly, studies have shown that students who have books at home are more likely to score higher on tests, according to a study of readers from 42 countries. Researchers believe this is because the benefits of having books at home encourage children to read for fun and talk to their parents about what they’ve learnt, which only stands to benefit them in the classroom.
Many thought the convenience and cost-effective advantage of digital media would make print content as obsolete as horse-drawn carriages. But it is not the case! It’s clear that people still enjoy paper-based content. Print still commands a respect that digital can’t match. It is the printed word that keeps us engaged and inspired. And for all these reasons, the printed word is here to stay.