Nominated For India Authors’ Award-2021 In Humor Category: But Is The NMCBI The Right Platform For Creative Writer-Authors?
The biggest highlight
of the event has been the launch of the India Authors’ Federation (IAF) by the
NMCBI to further their initiative to recognize the great efforts and
contributions of the writer-authors. The IAF is to have a Governing Council
with representation from all the states of India and the inclusion of the
regional languages of India in the federation was also marked as a most
important issue to be taken up in due course of time. The IAF promises to be a
great platform for the writer-authors to interact with fellow writer-authors,
showcase their books and to have mutual promotion campaigns to increase sales. All
the nominated and awarded writers of the India Authors’ Conference and
Awards-2021 are to be the founding members of the federation with Rahul Bansode from the NMCBI being the prime mover. The IAF also promises to hold frequent
meets/events for authors including a Lit Fest in Delhi next year.
Notwithstanding all
the moves in a definitely positive direction some questions and ‘ifs and buts’
do arise, mostly from the perspective of this writer’s experience. Firstly,
about the objective of the NMCBI to take up this initiative for the first time
(earlier they held events to award the coaches in various fields of activity)
which is basically ‘to recognize the great efforts of writers/authors in
empowering people (may also call readers)’. This phrase of ‘empowering people’
leads to various interpretations including the ‘business angle’ most
prominently. And this leads to the second point.
Personally speaking,
I never knew about this competition till a message came from the NMCBI through
LinkedIn came to me informing that I was being shortlisted for Nomination for
the Awards. As a low-profile writer like me who does not even manage to sell a
lot of copies of his books, I was hugely excited and filled up the nomination
process with zest—choosing naturally the ‘Humor and Entertainment’ category. However,
I continued to have my reservations about the event thanks largely to the ‘empowering’
factor and that all the activities had been happening in the social media of LinkedIn
which is always a natural platform for the business community. Although I have
been having a LinkedIn account for several years now, I never felt that I belonged
there, mainly because I never had any ‘business strategy’ behind my writing or
my books, and my posts/articles never got any attention. At best, I used to get
some telephone calls from the private life insurance companies offering me ‘jobs’!
Thirdly, even
though I found the three-layer evaluation process adopted by the NMCBI
transparent and good enough the same persistence on ‘purpose of my work or
adding values to human lives’ kept on disturbing my mind. As the first step I had
to send a video of mine talking about the event and my ‘purpose’. Next, I had
to fill up a power-point presentation form, telling about myself, my book/books
and the ‘purpose or adding values to fellow human beings’. The last step was an
interaction with the Jury on Zoom. Even though it was for more than 10 minutes,
quite liberal and friendly the questions or queries again concentrated mostly
on the same things. The Jury for me was only two persons—the Chairman of the
NMCBI who, I’m sure, never had time to read my work or for that matter any
other contender’s work, and a lady Juror whose name was not announced to me and
even now I don’t know her credentials, apart from the fact that most of the
Jurors were CEOs or Business and Finance stalwarts. Anyway, the lady Juror said
that she found some of the stories in my first book ‘funny’, a statement which
was not at all convincing for me—strengthening my doubt that the ‘work’ they
consider amounts to be about the ‘business or empowering’ part only, and never
about reading the writings or the books competing with other books.
Lastly, even after
being fully aware of what were the exact ‘requirements’ I, you can call it
foolish, kept on with my views that ‘my only purpose is to make people laugh; I
believe that laughter is the best medicine; that one should laugh from within
rather than resorting to artificial means; that creating a merry and friendly
atmosphere in workplaces increase efficiency and productivity of which I had
first-hand experience; and so on. I could never say that my purpose is to
motivate people to laugh, to act as a stress-buster in difficult times like the
pandemic-age and making better persons of fellow human beings, because I had
never undertaken the on-field businesses in various roles of a ‘motivator’ or an
‘educator’ or whatever in writing my books.
After the Jury
interaction I was convinced that I could never make it to getting the award;
but I wanted to attend the great event as basically it was for a very good
purpose of promoting writers/authors giving them a platform to showcase and
interact. My experience of the event was mixture of excitement and
disappointment—exciting for the IAF and disappointed because the way of giving
the awards more or less confirmed my suspicions. Most of the established ‘business-driven’
or else and writer/authors with celebrity status got most of the awards with a
few given to the promising youngsters which is extremely necessary in the new
age, as the Chairman himself said earlier in this introductory address that ‘digital-driven
expert youngsters are much more valuable than the old-timer or retired writers/authors’.
Therefore, I raised
the question. Is the NMCBI the right platform for genuinely creative fiction or
non-fiction writers many of whom become bestselling authors just on the basis
of their content, and not on any ‘empowering business strategy’ except for trying
various ways of promoting their books? I don’t question the necessity of the
businesses of ‘motivators’, ‘educators’, ‘self-help campaigners’, ‘coaching for
both mental and physical wellbeing’, ‘personality transformers’ and so on. However,
what about the writers having only good readable creative content with the
absence any business strategy behind?
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