By Abhik Sen and Moumita Barman
Time, just like space, is unevenly distributed in urban settings. For cities, recreation has become a casualty of the growing cityscapes. When people do find the time for recreation, they are often met with the question of affordability and accessibility. India’s urban planning failures are not limited to waterlogging, traffic, and housing crises; they also extend to its inability to treat recreation as a civic need. Without inclusive recreational infrastructure, most people are left to spend their time in malls or at home.
This is a failure of city design that demands serious intervention. India’s Smart Cities Mission claimed it would reinvent urban life, yet libraries barely register in its balance sheet. A 2024 survey by the Indian Institute of Human Settlements of the first 100 Smart Cities found just 27 library projects across 24 cities, which is less than 0.1 % of the total spending of the mission.
Libraries as public commons
A public library is a potential space of recreation that gives space to all age groups and addresses the needs of different classes. Libraries have been fading from urban imagination as places to pursue academic interests. However, these spaces can solve a vital need for a space to pause, reflect, and gather for a range of social and economic groups, like students, migrant workers, and the elderly. Libraries offer what most other urban spaces fail to do: give an indoor, free space where people can simply exist without the pressure to consume. They can offer people the freedom to belong without transaction. The growing demand for libraries is visible in cities like Shimla, where libraries provide young people navigating uncertainties a place to belong.
City libraries, like the university library, provide an outlet for the many migrating students from across Himachal Pradesh to build kinship networks that they can rely on for their immediate educational needs and social bonds. The libraries in the serene hills act as a place where the young find temporary respite from spatial pressures at their dwellings and household pressures.
Cost of access in the public sphere
The growing dependence on these spaces has exposed administrative inertia: public libraries are mostly overcrowded and underfunded. Private libraries have come up to fill the emerging gap, but remain out of reach for many. In Shimla, most students simply cannot afford them. The absence of such an essential public infrastructure is quietly pushing recreational and learning spaces behind a paywall.
While Shimla’s libraries have become spaces for youth finding respite and community, Hyderabad’s urban expanse tells a story marked by rapid economic growth and intra-state migration. Hyderabad’s public libraries are not considered central to the city’s recreational outlets.
The Telangana government has invested in public libraries, but usually intends to support students who appear for competitive exams. However, the city has a diverse population, such as large migrant workers in the service sector revolving around the tech industry, earning between Rs. 20,000–Rs. 40,000 per month. These are people who contribute to the city’s economy, but have scarce disposable incomes and few avenues for recreation. Hyderabad’s reputation as a global hub decries its approach to urban recreation, which is limited and exclusionary. The city needs to imagine its urban outlook beyond cafés and malls, and allocate space for recreational avenues more evenly, focussing on underserved areas and people.
A viable path forward
An under-explored aspect of public recreational space has been how it can be self-sustaining while maintaining its core purpose to serve all socioeconomic groups. Viable, inclusive revenue models already exist. In Karnataka, Tumkur’s “Smart Library & Innovation Centre” reserves half its floor space for business-incubation pods that help subsidise free reading rooms. In Chhattisgarh, Raipur’s Nalanda Parisar has paired a landscaped “oxy reading zone” with a for-profit café to fund upkeep. Such hybrid models can help keep entry free while monetising optional add-ons like events, co-working, and cafes so that most users do not have to pay to sit, study, or simply cool down. Cities like Hyderabad could pilot similar models in underserved zones, funded through CSR or PPP grants and then sustained by modest ancillary revenue.
However, even hybrid models must remain guided by the principle of equity, ensuring commercial elements do not crowd out the core public function of libraries. For example, zoning laws can cap the share of space allocated to revenue activities, while library boards could include community stakeholders to ensure responsiveness to local needs.
Further, libraries could function as decentralised civic nodes—hosting legal aid desks, community health workshops, or skilling sessions—ensuring that the space is used not only for leisure or study but also for empowering public participation and dignity. By embedding libraries into local governance, city planners can revive them as multifunctional commons essential for democratic urban life.
Libraries should be considered essential infrastructure and warrant dedicated line items in city budgets, much like roads and drainage systems. To ensure their sustainability while also generating income and livelihood opportunities, several alternative models can be explored. First, all public and private housing projects should be mandated to allocate free recreational spaces, including libraries, as part of their development plans. Second, wherever feasible, women or youth-led self-help groups (SHGs) can be engaged to operate for-profit enterprises within or alongside library spaces on a revenue-sharing model. This would not only monetise the space but also subsidise access and maintenance of the libraries. Finally, large offices and commercial market areas should be required to provide recreational and resting spaces accessible to all, with their upkeep managed through similar revenue-sharing arrangements.
Whether in corporate cities like Hyderabad or tourist towns like Shimla, the people’s needs remain the same: dignified spaces to gather, grow, and belong. With Indian cities expanding and competing for the “smart” label, it is time to treat recreation as a value. A brilliant city is one where everyone has a place to pause and reflect, regardless of income or identity. Libraries can be that place for Hyderabad.
Abhik Sen, a former hotelier and a graduate in Public Policy from TISS, Hyderabad, is currently interning with the Centre for Development Policy and Practice (CDPP), a Hyderabad-based research organization. Moumita Barman serves as a Senior Research Associate at CDPP.
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