Meeting Report 23/12/2007

Here's what we discussed at the meeting on 23/12/2007.

1. The KIC has expressed its willingness to run the Library, in case all other efforts fail. Two millionaires have agreed to support them in this.

2. Shashi Tharoor has written to a colleague in the UK Govt, and has received an encouraging response. The complete details are not known as yet. T.P Sreenivasan is also trying to help in this matter.

3.The Press Club made a generous offer of its vacant floor , to run the library.

4. Members pointed out the urgency to restart renewal of memberships. As per available figures, around 500 memberships lapse every month. This flow of membership might make the library unviable, in a few months.

5. Dr P Kishore, Director of Public Health at the Isle of Man, has promised to help. He has contacted Ariane , the BBC correspondent who did a feature on Plachimada – Coca Cola issue; so she knows all about Kerala and she will put this on the BBC website. He has also written to David Millibrank, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Common wealth – British Council is in his department.

6) UK India Education Research Initiative has a corpus fund of 4 million pounds. It was suggested that a part of this should be allocated to Kerala.

7. 23,000 students went to the UK last year for Higher education. The figures relating to Kerala should be obtained.

8.We should try and arrange a meeting with the officials of the council.

9. There was a heated discussion over certain points. The meeting broke up after this. A smaller group stayed back and discussed drafting a petition to key people in the Central and State govts. The objective of the petition is to secure an immediate intervention to stop the flow of memberships and transfer of staff.

It was suggested that the petition be sent to the following:

The Prime Minister , A.K Antony ,Vayalar Ravi, E. Ahamed, TKA Nair, Shiv Shankar Menon, Thomas Issac, MA Baby, Babu Paul, Balamohan Thampi, Dr Iqbal.

It was also decided that banners be put up outside the library, informing the members about the campaign , asking them not to refund their membership right away, and with some contact info(email id/web address..) of the campaign.

Other Developments

• We now know that there are 7 British libraries and 6 British Council Libraries. The libraries in Bhopal an Tvpm are BLs .These come under the ICCR, with the British Council providing management support. Hence, the focus should not solely be on the British Council, but we should look at the ICCR too.
  
• We've made contact with the campaign in Bhopal. The leaders of the campaign include leaders of the Congress party, who've promised to raise the issue in the central govt. Bhopal is actually focusing on the ICCR and is trying to persuade ICCR to takeover the library completely. They've written to Karan Singh, the chairman of the ICCR. Ajay Singh , MP (and son of Arjun Singh) has promised to help them. They're also trying to raise the issue with Sonia Gandhi.

Blog Updates

• A video report from CNN-IBN
• A post with information about the library being under ICCR, and its implications
• An email from David Blackie, expert in Intl education based in the UK, extending support to us. He also gives his views on the Council
  
• Newspaper clippings, Links to newspaper articles.
• Details of closure of the British Council library in Nepal

Next Steps

• Finalising and sending the petition to Govt officials
• Banner outside the library
• Look at the implications of the ICCR connection

Please visit the website (www.saveourbritishlibrary.org ) to participate in the discussions, and to keep track of the latest developments.

I've probably missed out some points. If you notice anything that needs to be changed/added, please mail me, after which this'll be put up the blog/website.

Going forward, mailing all the members of the campaign can be done through the google groups created by Arun T. (This will ensure email privacy and make it easier to maintain the list )


An incomplete list of the participants:

Judith Sebastian, Merle Kindred, Biju J Mathew, R Narayanaswamy, D.V Cyril, x, P.Radhakrishnan, P.Vijayakumar, Nayanika Krishnan, Divya Krishnan, Sankar Krishnan, Mrinal M, Anoop Kumar Thekkeveettil, B Stelzer Bouy, Pallichal Pramod, Abraham D, S.Pradeep Kumar, P. Venugopal, Arun T, Mohandas P, Shaji G.S, Sangeeth, Lt Gen SK Pillai, Sudheer M, K Jyothish Kumar, Suneetha, RS Liza, Monu Rajan, Krishna, Dolly Thomas,George Koruth, Asha Gopinathan, Shailaja Nair, Sebastian Mathew, Latha Kurien Rajeev, Tarun Thomas Abraham.