In the past decades, many eminent research scholars have pointed out the defects of this premier national institution. The greatest cancer is the trade union rivalries. In fact in 1990, an agreement with the Library of Congress, USA, to make microfilms of all books on India in Indian and US libraries had to be scrapped midway as the unions refused to cooperate with the library. In fact a few years ago, the Director-General of the National Library of Iran had come to visit the library. As the then Chief Librarian was showing him around the premises, a group of "union ruffians" waylaid them inside the library and began to attack her! The Iranian visitor ran away, shocked at this "welcome".

Bureaucracy is at its worst in this ‘graveyard of books’. The official sanctioned strength of staff is 781, of whom 57 are gazetted officers. At any point of time, at least 60 of these posts are vacant and it took 22 years to recruit a Gujarati-speaking technical hand for the care of Gujarati books.

The constraints of finance are the greatest handicap. Some years ago, an eminent Indian librarian disclosed, that the expense per capita in India for library services was just one paisa, as compared to 350 paisa in the UK and 450 paisa in the USA. (The gap would be considerably more now).

Another problem is that rare books are not properly cared for. In the rare book section, there is a set of the complete works of Shakespeare dating back to 1623, based on the bard’s original manuscript; the script of Goethe’s Faust bound in original Morocco leather with gold tooling and a silver allow medallion-studded cover, the Persian manuscript of Abul Fazl’s Akbarnama dated 1556 and a 17th-century palm leaf manuscript of the Kamba Ramayana.

But sadly, eminent Indian writer, Amit Chaudhuri found a 1790 copy of the newspaper Calcutta Gazette dumped near a toilet, whereas any book/journal more than 100 years old, must be always kept in the rare books division.

Extremely priceless and rare books are being ripped apart, page by page in the name of digital scanning and the original copies are being dumped like waste material. The microfilmed copies are also out of focus, having been copied by unskilled staff.

The authorities claim that in 2002, in the National Library, everyday 6000 pages were being digitalised. Modern science has not been able to decide, as to the life of the compact discs in which the books are transferred. As on date, the CDs last for 50 years. This means that the books digitalised in 2003 may not be readable in year 2025, unless like a museum, we preserve reading equipments also. There is no alternative to preserving the original printed book but ironically this is a task for which the Indian National Library is ill-equipped.