Mumbai Buses Get Mini Libraries With Books for Daily Commuters

Mumbai’s daily commute already comes with its own set of rituals: finding a seat, checking the phone, answering emails, staring out of the window and trying not to think about how much longer the journey will take.

Now, on some Cityflo buses, there is another option. Pick up a book.

Cityflo has partnered with Project Mumbai to launch Turning Pages, a pilot that puts small collections of books on select buses operating on Mumbai’s office-commute routes. The idea is straightforward. Passengers can choose a book, read it during the journey and return it for someone else to pick up. They can also donate books and recommend titles for other commuters.

The initiative is part of Project Mumbai’s Read Mumbai movement, which aims to make reading a more regular part of life in the city. For Cityflo, it also builds on something the company says it has observed among its passengers: people like reading on their commute, but often struggle to find the time for it elsewhere.

What’s On The Shelves?

The books have been donated by the Project Mumbai community and cover a fairly broad range, from fiction and biographies to business, self-development and contemporary Indian writing. The collection is being introduced as a pilot rather than across the entire Cityflo network.

That means not every Cityflo bus will have a bookshelf. The initiative is currently running on select routes, with the possibility of expanding depending on how commuters respond. Cityflo’s Mumbai network covers routes connecting places including Thane, Vashi, Navi Mumbai, Borivali, Mulund, Chembur, Andheri, Powai, and several other residential and office corridors.

There is also a small community element to the project. A passenger can add a pre-loved book to the collection, rather than simply taking one away. Project Mumbai says the books are meant to circulate among commuters, so the collection can change as people contribute and recommend titles.

The idea is to make reading part of the commute.

There is a practical reason for putting the books on buses. Cityflo operates more than 1,200 buses and records around 18 million rides a year across Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. Its buses are primarily used by people travelling to and from work, which gives the project a ready audience without asking people to make a separate trip to a library.

It isn’t the first attempt to put books on public transport in the Mumbai region. Navi Mumbai’s civic transport system has previously experimented with a Books in Bus initiative, placing books on selected buses so passengers could read while travelling.

What is different about Turning Pages is that the books are being introduced into an existing private office-commute network, with passengers encouraged to contribute to the collection themselves.

For now, it remains a small experiment on select Cityflo routes. But the proposition is refreshingly simple: if people already have to spend time on a bus every morning and evening, perhaps a few of those minutes can go towards finishing a chapter instead of refreshing a screen.

And unlike the traffic, the book might actually get you somewhere.

(With inputs from various sources)

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