Photo: The Jaipur BookMark professional event in 2020 which is generally a part of the Jaipur Literature Festival
The 14th edition of Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) will be held virtually from 19-28 February. The 2021 digital edition will have over 200 speakers on board, including 2020 Booker prize winner Douglas Stuart, Noam Chomsky, T M Krishna, and doctors Chandrakant Lahariya and Gagandeep Kang. The speakers’ line-up includes doctors, politicians, journalists, authors, poets, and winners of literary awards.
The 2021 edition of the event will explore a vast umbrella of themes, including history and politics, artificial intelligence (AI) and technology, environment, and climate change, food and literature, mental health, geopolitics, travel, historical fiction, and democracy and constitutions.
JLF will also feature a special session on India’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, with doctors and co-authors Chandrakant Lahariya, Randeep Guleria, and Gagandeep Kang participating in a panel discussion on the country’s battle with Coronavirus.
Another special session will analyze India’s electoral process with a panel discussion on the topic involving Navin Chawla, 16th Chief Election Commissioner of India; Neil Kantha Uprety; Dasho Kunzang Wangdi, Chief Election Commissioner of Bhutan; and Chief Election Commissioner of Nepal.
2021 Booker prize-winning author Douglas Stuart will talk about his debut novel Shuggie Bain while author Camilla Townsend will discuss the process behind her book “Cundill History Prize-winning Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs.”
The entire program for the festival can be accessed here
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
