The landmark Wheeler bookstalls at railway stations may soon be gone with the government deciding to invite open bidding.

 When I was a child I used to wonder why there was a Wheeler stall at every railway station. I grew up reading its books on every journey I embarked, only to realise what was so unique about A.H. Wheeler.

It has 258 bookstalls across India providing employment to 10,000 Indians. It stocks a variety of books from Prem Chand's Godan to Erich Segal's Love Story apart from newspapers and magazines.

Above all, the reading culture it has instilled among the travelling Indian masses is beyond praise. The recent announcement by the railways minister Lalu Prasad Yadav to ban this longstanding bookshop because the name sounds English has raised hackles of millions of book lovers who have been cherishing the heritage of Wheelers.

The threat to A.H. Wheeler & Co, which published Rudyard Kipling when he was all but unknown, was announced live on television when the minister departed from his prepared text to say in Hindi, "Wheeler, Wheeler, Wheeler. Why do we have a Wheeler bookstall everywhere? The English have left this country long back!"

In his speech, Yadav asserted that the government has decided not to renew the company's contract to run station bookstalls and to invite open bidding. The question that statement triggers in my mind is whether such a move is to champion the cause of free market reforms or to encourage sycophants to play their games in the name of 'competitive bidding'?

While A.H. Wheeler sounds quintessentially English, the company is an entirely Indian-owned enterprise based in Allahabad, founded by French author, Emile Moreau and T.K. Bannerjee, an Indian partner. In 1950, Bannerjee took over the company and since then, he along with his grandson Amit Bannerjee have been running the company. Over the years, Wheeler bookstores have not just been a reader's delight, they have also contributed to the railway's revenue from book sales. Perhaps all the government wishes is to halt the process of automatically granting contracts to run railway station bookstores. This would put Wheeler under a competitive free market environment where other companies can bid for the same. The move has its own set of advantages:

• More revenue for the government
• Greater choice to the readers
• More competition among bookstores

Besides, the new bookstall policy appears to be highly welfare oriented with its appealing features:

• A reservation for war widows, weaker sections and unemployed graduates to run bookstalls at B, C and D stations
• At A class stations a two-packet tender system to be introduced which provides for a uniform tenure of five years

Then why call this philanthropic approach a controversy? An uncompromising and rational book lover would be able to read between the lines of Lalu's speech. Is a bookstore that contributes 80 per cent of the book sale earned revenue to the railways but holds a meagre share of the railway bookstalls capable of threatening the economy's stability with its monopoly? Or did the minister make a mistake by shooting off his mouth blaming the English before letting his action be evaluated on its own merits?

It is to be seen whether Wheeler will be covertly discriminated against while bidding openly if and when the government auctions the bookstore contracts; and whether Lalu's hegemony, be it over a chaiwalla or the bookstore is opposed. In the mean time, an ordinary reader needs to gauge why the Wheeler bookstores have faced strong>the axe while no attention has been paid to Indian railway platforms' most striking features i.e. the filth, the beggars and the stinking loos.