Significance of World Book Day (Book Festival)

World Book Day is celebrated every year on April 23 as World Book and Publishing Rights Day.  This day is celebrated with the aim of promoting reading and publishing books and protecting intellectual property through copyright. 
The celebration of this day by UNESCO started on April 23, 1995.  It is inspired by Catalonia (Spain).  Prior to April 23, 1923, this day was celebrated in Spain as Rose Day.  On this day, the Spaniards used to give each other roses.  On April 23, 1923, following the death of the great Spanish writer Miguel Cervantes, the Spaniards lovingly offered books in place of the traditional rose petals to pay homage to him.  This event became the basis for the celebration of World Book Day.  The great English writer William Shakespeare died on April 23, the Inca Garcaso de la Vega from Peru, Teresa de la Merca from France, Josep Pala from Spain, and the great Russian-American writer Vladimir Nebokav from Iceland died on April 23.  It is also the birthday of the late Lexness of France, Mahisa Duan of France, Avram Davidson of America, Manuel Meez and many other great writers.  To commemorate all these great literary writers, UNESCO started celebrating World Book and Copyright Day on April 23, 1995.  This day is celebrated with the aim of encouraging people from all walks of life, rich and poor, children, youth and the elderly to read books.  This day is celebrated as a ‘book festival’ by writers, publishers, booksellers and book lovers from all over the world.  This day is a day for writers, publishers, booksellers to build mutual literary relationship with book lovers, which becomes a means of creating, publishing and selling literature according to the interests of readers of all classes.  This day also serves to increase the interaction between the writers for acquiring intellectual property.  In today’s age of internet the importance of books is decreasing.  Readers are spending more time and money chatting on the Internet, social networking and playing computer games than books.  As a result of which their body, eyes and mind are being adversely affected, the human being is becoming more selfish, intolerant and violent. 
While books provide a way for a human being to live a better life.  Books accompany every moment of human life.  Due to the importance of books, every year UNESCO gives the status of UNESCO World Book Capital to one city in the world.  Starting from Madrid, Incheon is now ranked as the 15th UNESCO World Book Capital.  The South Korean city of Incheon has been awarded the 2015 UNESCO World Book Capital for its book-raising programs, the contributions of all publishers who publish traditional books and modern e-books, and for book lovers to fall in love with books.  Rated.  New Delhi was also declared a UNESCO World Book Capital in 2003.  Let’s all work together today to develop a culture of reading books in all sections of society on World Book and Copyright Day.  Buy and read books.  Once purchased, the book lasts a lifetime.  There is a need to create a trend of giving books instead of trophies or other expensive gifts in various occasions.  There is a need to develop respect, love and interest in books.  Having a personal library at home with books can make the home environment literary.