It is indeed true that books are our best friends and can keep boredom at bay, especially during this long lockdown. Hence, Suresh Kumar S, Primary and Secondary Education Minister, Karnataka, made a special appeal to people on April 10 through a Facebook post and asked everyone to download the E-Sarvajanika Granthalaya app and make the most of the e-books available on it during this lockdown. E-Sarvajanika Granthalaya app was launched in February 2020 by the Education Minister along with the Department of Public Libraries.
Suresh Kumar, who was happy to see several people downloading the app through Google Play store, mentioned in his post, "We have observed that the downloads in the past few days have increased. More than 16,500 people have downloaded this app already. With the increase in the number of ebook users, it is another opportunity for Kannada book industries to create a new impression among readers."
The minister further added in his post, "This app includes at least one lakh books. While school students can access the information related to English, Math, Social Studies and Science experiments, adults can also read classic novels in several languages including English, Kannada, Hindi and a few others. If you are preparing to write any government exams or competitive exams, you can get all kinds of textbooks and reference materials in this app"
However, this post does not seem to have gone down well among his followers and those people who downloaded the E-Sarvajanika Granthalaya app. One of his followers commented on the minister’s post stating, "Respected Sir, The app is crashing too much and it's full of bugs. People definitely have been downloading it a lot. Rating is very poor 2.3/5."
Meanwhile, another person commented, "The app is not up to the mark. Not able to change the library and not user-friendly. Please consider this as my feedback."
Similarly, another person stated, "Sir we are not able to access any novel. The filtering and search options are not working. Too many glitches. Request you to direct the concerned to rectify the app."
Since we wanted to check if the app is up to the mark and is working well, we downloaded the app from Google Play store. Upon downloading the app, it asked us to register as a user and enter the address of the nearest library and a new password was generated quickly. When we opened the app, we could see a few videos related to different subjects and topics for school children. However, as we move to the categories and click on ‘History’, it takes us to a series of videos like Bharat Ek Khoj and one can hardly find any books related to History. Similarly, when we clicked on different subjects, there were no books available except for a few short videos. This app definitely needs to be rectified.
When we called Guruprasad, who is part of the app’s technical team, and explained about the glitches, he said, "I can check if there is any fault in the backend and get back to you."
