Balbharti’s prints 2.8 crore textbooks amid lockdown

When the Maharashtra government announced a complete lockdown across the state in March owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the publishing bureau Balbharti was in a

When the Maharashtra government announced a complete lockdown across the state in March owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the publishing bureau Balbharti was in a tough spot. At the time, nearly 2.80 crore copies of textbooks were yet to be printed while the textbooks for Class 12 were still being revised.

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Three months later, even as several restrictions continue in the state, Balbharti has distributed nearly 7 crore copies of textbooks and study materials for Classes 1 to 12 to distributors and schools in the state. This remarkable feat was achieved by a team of nearly 500 people working with Balbharti for content creation – including printers, processors, members of the board of studies, artists, and the production team.

“When the lockdown was announced, we were scared as to what would happen to the remaining printing process and were worried that book distribution would be delayed. Considering the situation in our state, it was evident that restrictions might not be eased soon. Within a few days, our team decided to do our best to bring out textbooks in time,” said Vivek Gosavi, director, Balbharti.

Within a month of the lockdown, several groups of various teams working on the textbooks were created on social messaging applications and people started working from home. While re-printing textbooks for Classes 1 to 11 was a big task, a bigger challenge was to create and print Class 12 textbooks as per the revised syllabus which would come into effect from the academic year 2020-21. “Our members of the board of studies worked day and night to provide content and get it corrected and finalised. The designers and illustrators would send their sketches on WhatsApp and we would give them suggestions then and there. This way, we managed to finish our new textbooks for Class 12 by the first week of April,” said Gosavi. PDF textbooks of Class 12 were made available online from April 8 and have seen over 1 crore downloads to date.

As restrictions were eased in some parts of the state in April, printing slowly started in areas that were marked as green and orange zones with special permissions. On May 18, Balbharti began delivering its textbooks to distributors and government-aided schools which provide textbooks free of cost to students. “Around 95% of the distribution work is complete. In the coming days, textbooks will reach students through their schools,” said Gosavi.