According the latest available figures from the National Statistical Office (NSO), only 4.4 per cent of Thais aged 10 years and above read books in their spare time on a regular basis, compared to about 30 per cent in most industrial countries. The average time spent reading books unrelated to school work was approximately three minutes per day, compared to 25-30 minutes in rich countries.

In a related survey on reading habits by the NSO, 48.8 per cent of people said they did not read because they would rather watch TV and 36 per cent said they could not find the time to read. Reading for leisure, to cultivate the mind and for self-improvement has never been part of the Thai culture.

A lot more needs to be done to get Thais interested in reading. There are some encouraging signs. Children and teenagers far outnumber adults at most of the book fairs held every year. A new generation of children has acquired a taste for reading because they were fortunate enough to grow up in a family headed by well-educated parents who encouraged them to pursue this most ennobling pursuit and had the financial means to support it. But the exorbitant prices that publishers in this country put on quality children's books are beyond what a middle-class family can afford. With a typical price range of Bt200-300 per title, which is equivalent to a decent meal for a family of four, children from lower-income families are denied access to good reading materials designed to enhance their mental, emotional and social development in their formative years.

Publishers try to justify the high prices by citing high import duties for the glossy paper that children's books are usually printed on, copyright fees and marketing expenses. It may be true that such factors contribute to high costs. But they fail to come up with an adequate explanation as to why prices of locally produced children's books should be priced roughly the same as those published in industrialised countries where incomes and cost of living are several times higher.

Many less fortunate children have to satiate their appetite for reading with cheaply produced low-quality comic books that are unsuitable or even harmful to young people. And there is no lack of unscrupulous publishers churning out comics that contain sexually explicit materials and depict senseless violence that poison young minds. Authorities confiscated hundreds of titles of such creepy comic books from a number of vendors at this year's Bangkok International Book Fair after some concerned parents notified the organiser.

This sad state of affairs in which too many children are denied access to good reading materials must not be allowed to continue. The government should inject new life into public libraries throughout the country, which have been on the decline for the past few decades, during which memberships have plummeted. This is because successive governments have neglected to provide sufficient funds to maintain public libraries. Too many libraries faced with budgetary constraints fall into disrepair and are reduced to places where outdated collections of books that are no longer read are stored.

To make public libraries places that people consider worth visiting, a major upgrade is long overdue. A more stimulating atmosphere, especially multimedia facilities, should serve as a major draw. Thailand has for too long paid lip service to the idea of promoting lifelong learning among its people so as to become a knowledge-based society. The book publishing business has been successful in quantitative terms but there are obviously not enough quality titles by local authors on the market. Encouraging the public to read should be carried out alongside the effort to promote new literary talent. Only when we as a society are able to match quantitative development of the reading public with a supply of quality books by a new crop of home-grown literary lights can we expect the quest to become a knowledge-based society self-sustaining.