Many thanks for your reply. It was much appreciated.
Two points only for now: I was not aware that shoemakers in Goa would be classified as "untouchables" in the prevailing caste system and I am not sure this might be right. Hopefully, someone might enlighten us on this particular point.
Secondly, I have worked on a small scheme to leave a friend's ancestral home to a local village as a small library but it has not yet been finalised. A major concern about ancestral homes is that the cost of maintenance is a big problem even if the home and the land for a designated purpose come free to local people.
Akin to this, another possibility is to ship 'discarded' library books to institutions in Goa. Such discarded books are invariably not that old at all. They are simply discarded to make space for newer stocks. Clearly, there is the cost of sending them across to different destinations where they may be wanted but one embassy in London that I know has collected and shipped books from UK academics and their institutional libraries for use in home institutions in the Caribbean rather than see some excellent books pulped.
Cornel
