The sixth edition of the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF 2022) has been rescheduled to March 2022. It will now be held at the beaches of Calicut (Kozhikode) from 17 – 20 March 2022. It was earlier scheduled to be held from 20 – 23 January 2022. Organized by the DC Kizhakemuri Foundation, the Kerala Literature Festival is supported by the Government of Kerala and the Kerala Tourism Board.
“Taking in view the surge in a number of infections of Omicron variant, we have rescheduled the festival by two months. We have seen a great amount of love and overwhelming public support and participation registrations over the past months for KLF 2022. Hence wholeheartedly keeping the interest of our speakers, participants, audiences, the general public, and our patrons we have to reschedule the dates to 17 – 20 March 2022. The current discourse is that the numbers may peak between the latter part of January and fall by mid of February. We are hoping that the Coronavirus will recede in time. We are determined on hosting an in-person festival with the active support of our patrons, speakers, and partners”, says Ravi Deecee, chief facilitator, Kerala Literature Festival.
The sixth edition of KLF is a coming together of the community after a year of virtual existence, hence the theme – “Come Together”. Set along with the shores of the Arabian Sea, the 4-day festival brings artists, actors, celebrities, writers, thinkers, and activists closer to people of different backgrounds and interests. With an aggregate footfall of more than 3 lakhs, KLF is the second largest festival of its kind in Asia, combining the best of literary and popular cultures.
Jeffrey Archer, Ada Yonath, Abhijit Banerjee, Arundhati Roy, Remo Fernandes, Sagarika Ghose, Wendy Doniger, Shashi Tharoor, Manu S Pillai, Devdutt Pattanaik, Chris Kraus, Sudhir Kakar, Pawan Varma, Perumal Murugan, Prakash Raj, William Dalrymple, Paula Richman, Anita Nair, M Mukundan, Benyamin, TM Krishna, KR Meera, Sunil Ilayidom, Paul Zacharia among others are the prominent speakers at the event.
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.
