Two million books, housed across a sprawling building, free for anyone to borrow and read. That's the wealth that Anke Gowda, a retired sugar factory worker from India's southern Karnataka state, has accumulated over the past five decades. The 79-year-old made headlines last month when he received the Padma Shri - a civilian honour awarded by the federal government - for his extraordinary contribution to promoting literacy and learning. [...] Today, students and teachers from across the state visit the library. Among them is Ravi Bettaswami, an assistant professor at a private college who says that he has also been inspired to build a collection of thousands of books. I have used Gowda's library to study and have taken my students there so they could read and also help organise the books, he says.