Library – the treasure house of knowledge provides an individual various ideas and opportunities to live life better, keeps him away from daily worries and anxieties though for a short period of time, as he remains absorbed in new thoughts. It gives chance to an individual to reform himself and help him in realizing the past misdeeds. In short, it teaches individual how to be self-confident and educate him to be a better citizen of tomorrow.

To reform and to divert the mindset from vices to virtues, initiative has been taken up to set up libraries even in prisons/correctional canters.

In view of the above, unlike other Jails of the country and the world around, Library in Central Jail, Guwahati has also been set up.

About Central Jail Guwahati:
Central Jail, Guwahati, being the Largest in the whole of the Northeast India, growing as the MODEL Jail for other parts of the country. Though this Jail was established in the British period in 1881, at Fancy Bazar in Guwahati, but in 2010, it has been shifted with modern infrastructure at Lokhora, Sarusajai in Guwahati and the entire procedure of shifting was completed in the year 2012. This Jail has an area of around 80 (eighty) Bighas of land and it has a capacity of 900 Male inmates and 100 Female inmates. Presently it has been overcrowded with more than 1300 inmates comprising Male, Female and feeding children with their mother. Here in Central Jail, Guwahati there are various categories of prisoners such as Extremists of number of outfits, convicts, life convicts and Under Trial Prisoner’s (UTP). People from various communities having diverse languages and culture with ethnicity are lodged here and they share each other’s culture and tradition and live in harmony. In short there seems to be a kind of unity in diversity. This seems to be very special and appreciating among the inmates of this Jail.

Formation of Jail Library:
Considering the various communities of people being lodged in this Jail, the Jail Library has been equipped with Multilanguage books of various writers along with children’s books. There are books of writers such as Chetan Bhagat, Don Brown, APG Abdul Kalam Azad, Patterson, etc. As on 01-04-2019, The Central Jail Guwahati Library has all total 3034 No. of books. 1155 No. of Magazines/Periodicals are made available for the readers in Assamese, Bengali, Boro, Hindi and English language. Regular monthly Magazines (i) Wisdom, (II) Outlook, (III) Health Magazine, etc are provided to the readers in Library. Besides these, daily newspapers of various languages are also made available for the inmates to keep themselves upto date with the outside world.

Record reveals that the Office of the Inspector General of Prisons Assam, Khanapara, Guwahati-22 has provided good no. of books at the beginning, Various NGO’s such as Prison Ministry, Food 4 Thought Foundation along with the collaboration of Art of Living Foundation, Emannual Hospital Association, Universities such as IGNOU, K.K. Handique and many more have contributed a lot in the establishment and expansion of this Jail Library.

Food 4 Thought foundation alone has donated nearly 400 books of Multilanguage dimension. My special gratitude to the authorities for their novel contribution in this regard. Not only this, it has organized an All India level competition named as “India Reading Olympiad “at Hyderabad Literary Festival and awarded prizes to the winners in different categories. The inmates of this Jail namely Sri. Birlang Narzery, Mr. Basanta Doley are the lucky winners from this Jail further certificates were distributed to all the jail inmates who participated in the competition.
The library, which was very tiny for several years, became a fully established one because of the utmost efforts of these NGO’s and many unnamed book lovers. Even the inmates started contributing for the growing up of this Jail library. Thus, it is growing day by day and started organizing various literary programmers along with competitions to motivate readers with an initiative to reform them. This helped a lot in diverting the mind of the inmates from vices to virtues. They are developing tremendously and coming back to the mainstream of societies. This Jail Library is run by the Jail inmates under the In-Charge of a life convict Sri. Birlang Narzery. He is assisted by the other inmates to maintain daily records and the Jail authority supervise the entire process.
It has been noticed that some inmates who get release from this Jail, comes to meet the authorities and thanks for the mental support that he got while in prison. Thus, the process of reformation is in a full-fledged way in this Jail. There seems to be love and affection among the inmates as well as for the authorities. The inmates feel as if they are living in “HOSTEL”.

All this has become possible because of the strong support from the NGOs like Food 4 Thought foundation, Kama Bhumi Foundation, Prison Ministry, Shree Shree Ravi Sankar’s Art of living, etc. and motivation of the well-wishers. I just wish “May the Lord help us and support us in our work to reform the inmates in the best possible way so that when they get back to the main stream of society they can live a happy and prosperous life” .