National Mission on Cultural Mapping and Roadmap

India’s cultural heritage is a collection of many ancient as well as modern cultures & traditions. To preserve & promote this diverse heritage, Ministry of Culture has decided to create a consolidated database of our cultural assets and resources under its National Mission on Cultural Mapping and Roadmap. This mission is included under the umbrella programme “Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat”.

Salient Features of the Mission

The salient features of the mission are as follows:

• The mission involves the transfer of knowledge of our cultural arts & heritage through digital world. For this, the culture ministry has decided to design web-portal to maintain a database of cultural assets and resources.
• It involves Cultural Mappinge collecting, recording, analysing and synthesising the information of available local cultural assets and resources with the help of local artists.
• It aims for statistical data collection of various art forms, about individual artists, communities, cultural organisations and spaces, festivals and events, heritage properties, etc.
• It envisages creation of cultural knowledge centres as well as facilitating the structural and functional changes in the existing zonal cultural centres.
• The mission also seeks to open a channel for direct communication between artists and the Government.

Current status of the Mission

To commemorate the birth centenary of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, who hailed from Mathura, the culture ministry launched the mission from Mathura district in June, 2017. Further, with an aim that no cultural talent or heritage of India remains isolated, the ministry has planned to explore a total of 6.40 Lakh villages in next 3 years. Beside this, the ministry is also trying to launch massive cultural awareness campaigns to connect all artists across the country to government through web based portals.

End Notes

Properly mapped, documented and consolidated database can be highly effective to promote and preserve the rich cultural heritage. Also, such initiative has huge potential to boost tourism in the country, thus, providing means of livelihood to many. Though the pace of work execution is low due to miniscule government funding to the ministry, yet if completed successfully, the initiative would be a game changer for India’s cultural heritage and tourism sector.