An Anguished Social Philosopher Wonders:
How can a community that cannot write even a postcard build a movement?

Question: Has book reading declined after AI came? 

Answer: Globally, Wikipedia traffic has dropped by 8%. Factual articles have fallen by 33%. But the situation in India is different. In 2025, the book market grew by 28.6%. Fiction sales increased by 30.7%. 37% of Gen Z are buying print books. But this does not apply to everyone.

The Hindi book market has also grown significantly. In the "Hindi Belt", literary festivals and book fairs are packed. At the Delhi World Book Fair, Hindi book sales are growing by 20-25% every year. Among the youth, there is high demand for "Hindi non-fiction, autobiographies, political analysis" books. In UP, Bihar, and MP, Dalit-Bahujan literature is selling lakhs of copies in Hindi. "Jai Bheem" publications, Forward Press and others are increasing BC-Dalit consciousness in Hindi.

But this momentum is absent in Telugu. Unlike in Hindi, the market for social-political non-fiction in Telugu is very small. Within that, the share of OBCs is extremely low.

Question: What is the reading interest among OBCs? What is your experience?

Answer: Here lies the real tragedy. OBCs constitute 52% of the country. But in reading and buying books, they lag behind even Dalits. Dalits, who are 16%, buy twice as much non-fiction as OBCs. They are widely buying the Indian Constitution even at 700 rupees.

I will tell you my own experience regarding OBCs. In 2004, I brought out the book "What Should BCs Do". I made it available at every meeting. Even when a Rs.75 book was given for Rs.25, 1000 copies were not sold in two years. Now I plan to print 100 copies in digital print for the new generation. I don’t have high hopes.

Question: Will they take it if given for free?

Answer: That didn’t happen either. I posted on WhatsApp: "Write one postcard to get the book 'Federalism in India' for free." Only 8 letters came. More than 100 people posted their address on WhatsApp and asked to send it.

I said, "It is a waste of effort to write a book, pack it, affix stamps, and post it for those who don’t have the patience to write a letter." Even then, there were none who said they would write a card.

Question: Can’t you create awareness by holding Zoom meetings?

Answer: I did. During the Corona period, I ran a Zoom meeting every Saturday evening. 30 to 70 people would attend. But they didn’t come to listen to the main speaker; they sat waiting only for a chance to speak themselves. Starting with "two minutes," they would consume fifteen minutes. It felt like they did not come to learn, to listen, or to work. It was not like this in 1990. They listened with enthusiasm. They worked. They moved forward. Kanshi Ram’s inspiration worked powerfully. In the 1990s, the Dalit Writers, Artists, and Intellectuals United Forum (Darakame) with great inspiration brought a turning point in social, philosophical, and literary fields.

By the time of the Corona period, the situation had changed. I held Zoom meetings for 53 weeks with those who rose through self-effort among OBCs—those who went as laborers to Singapore and grew to 100 crores, those who went from software employee in America to founding a company with 1420 employees, those who started an urban bank with 30 lakhs and made it number one in South India with a turnover of thousands of crores.

Result? As an organization, not a single person came forward to work with us. Not one book was bought. No personal closeness developed. They left as if to say, "Who are you, who am I."

One Zoom meeting takes three days of work. Topic, speaker, poster, WhatsApp campaign, calls. Doing this for a year, all this effort was an utter flop.

Question: What is the root of this problem?

Answer: The nature of OBCs. The mindset to learn, to know, to work for society must grow. The mentality of "someone else should do it, we will enjoy it" must change. Some enjoy it as a holiday when there is a strike for a pay hike. The same people are first in line to submit bills after the salary increases. But ask them to pay union membership, or to come for a dharna, and they disappear.

If it is a caste association, a lakh people come. They marry within the caste. For that, caste associations are needed. For a BC association, all castes must come together, right? There should be a meeting with ten lakh people, right? They don’t come. Even getting a lakh people is difficult. Caste consciousness is not transforming into BC consciousness.

I will share an experience from when I was Chairman of the BC Commission. Five hundred BC seats in medical colleges went to OCs. A sliding error. A BC student who got a seat in open category in Adilabad later shifted to Hyderabad under the BC quota. The vacant seat in Adilabad should be given to a BC. It was a BC seat in Hyderabad. It was a BC in Adilabad. So that seat must be given to BCs. On this, we summoned the VC and Registrar and questioned them. They said it was done as per computer programming. Students and their parents call about this. They send messages. When we said "come and submit an application, we will take care of the rest," not a single person came. This is the consciousness of BCs.

Among Dalits, there is pride in saying "We are Dalits." Oppression is their identity. There is a collective consciousness that "my community must progress." Ambedkar alone is their god.

Among BCs, there is hesitation to say "I am a BC." The illusion that "we too are upper castes." Over a hundred castes, a thousand leaders. Unity is zero. The personal selfishness of "as long as me and my family are settled, that’s enough."

Question: Then what is the solution?

Answer: 7 soldiers are more important than 70 time-wasters. That is why Swami Vivekananda said — give me five youth with steel muscles. I will move the nation forward.

Even if 99 out of 100 copies go to waste, if one person changes, that is enough. That one person is tomorrow’s Phule. We must understand the key points of the Indian Constitution. We must make ten people sit and explain it to them. In every village, even with four people, we must conduct studies on the Indian Constitution and Indian history from a Shudra perspective. Change will accelerate.

1. Set a filter: If someone wants a book, ask them to "write 5 lines on why you want to read it." Only those who put in effort will value it.

2. Don’t just speak, make them act: "Share your experiences" is a waste of time. Give a task: "By tomorrow, get caste certificates applied for 5 BC children in your village." 99% will run away. The movement will continue with the remaining 1%.

3. Relatable heroes: Not the Singapore billionaire, but "how did Sudhakar from our village become a constable." The aspirations of BCs are that small.

Those 8 who wrote letters are the real BC children. We must begin with them. Buddha had only 5 disciples. Phule’s first school had only 8 girls.

Closing word: This is not criticism, but self-criticism. If BCs do not wake up, it will be slavery for another fifty years. They will live in "Gulamgiri". Unite. Work together as one collective leadership. Tell those movements, activists, and leaders who work with secret ties to various parties while pretending to be an independent BC movement to stop this racket. Identify such people. The new Gen Z generation must rise. My hopes are on them.