Students from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka and Bhutan have easy access to cheaper books, which looked like a pipedream a decade ago. One of the initiatives in this regard is that of PHI Learning, which believes in spreading education with affordable and high quality texts.

Yogesh Srivastava, marketing executive of PHI Learning, said that under the imprint of Eastern Economy Editions, books of science, humanities, management, computer information, were available at cheaper prices. `'Basically, we provide Indian students with the best of both the worlds as books by Indian authors are also provided for,'' he said.

Books ranging from Reinventing the UN by Ajit Banerjee and Murari R. Sharma to Sociology of Religions by Ali Shariati, from Kotler and Keller's Marketing Management to Fossils in Earth Sciences by Anis Kumar Ray are available.

PHI Learning has collaborated with IT giants like Microsoft Learning and NIIT, and university presses such as Harvard University Press, MIT for publishing and promoting a wide range of their texts in India.