Why contemporary Indian literature is in danger

Even though I don’t mean this article to be something very series or hurt sentiments of anyone, seems like that is exactly what is going to happen. Because I’m gonna put forth the truth about Indian literature in a very ruthless way.

The number of books written and published throughout the world is rising at a pace not even a very frantic reader can keep up with. So many books get published that the TBR lists of the readers are overflowing. Not to forget the great books already written and present in the list of books they already want to read. But is the quality of the books at par with their number? I really don’t think so in case of Indian literature.

In India, everyday new authors are coming up with their books. Seems like in the last decade or so, the youth has received a lot of motivation to write books. I’d like to give the credit of this motivation to authors like Chetan Bhagat, Durjoy Datta and Amish Tripathi. And I don’t mean that in a sarcastic manner at all. Okay, may be a little. But these guys have written books which are at least not self-published (no, there is no proof that self-published books aren’t good, but you know what I mean). I personally love ‘The shiva trilogy’ by Amish Tripathi. And must’ve like a couple of books each by Chetan Bhagat and Durjoy Datta as well (yeah!).

Then why am I not happy with how the Indian literature has turned out? Well, I feel that taking inspiration from some writers who did great (at least commercially) even with genres like romance, they wanted to write books of their own. But what is lacking is the level of research and quality they put into their books. Even genre like mythology has been one of the favourites of Indian readers. But even here the authors just want to commercialize their books and not all of them bother about the content.

But, you know what is worse than all of this? That the readers are enjoying reader stories with poor content. The other day, I was doing some research on Amazon. Guess what I found? Really bogus love stories had so many and so good ratings on Amazon. I know I am no one to judge the taste of someone. But I really feel that these readers are missing out on something really fabulous that lays beyond these cheesy, boring than life love stories (I’ve got to admit that I’ve read a few of them when I begun reading). Some of these feel like they have been written by a 13-year-old and the effort put in editing is literally zero.

There are a few good writers here, that’s what gives me some relief. And their energy is just so visible from the quality. And let’s not forget the great authors like Khushwant Singh, Sudha Murthy, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai and Amitav Ghosh. These guys are the gems of Indian literature. Sadly, the number of other writers surpasses the number of these good ones by a big, big margin. It just pains me to see that there are hardly any books by Indian authors on genres such as fantasy, horror or science-fiction. Are the authors of today just focused on publishing more books without caring about the content? All these facts just bring me down to one question: what is the reason? Can anyone try and answer it for me?

*Sits and waits for abusive comments for being a ruthless jackass who sits in her self-righteousness*