No official calendars, diaries, greeting cards from 2021

Come 2021, there will be no official calendars, diaries, coffee-table books or greeting cards. The Centre has planned to go paperless and asked all ministries, departments and public sector entities to stop printing such materials that also cost “a few crores” to the exchequer.

“The Government of India has decided that there will be no further activities towards printing wall calendars, desktop calendars, diaries, festival greeting cards and similar materials by all ministries/departments/ autonomous bodies and other organs of the government,” a directive issued by the Ministry of Finance said.

“The printing of coffee table books is also banned and appropriate use of e-books is encouraged. Therefore, all concerned are directed to make efforts to adopt innovative means to use digital or online method for the above activities,” it said.

The ministry said the decision has been taken as the world is increasingly moving towards adopting digital force multipliers for productivity and given the fact that using technological innovations for planning, scheduling and forecasting was known to be “economical, efficient and effective.

Before banning it altogether, earlier this year, the government had directed all central ministries and departments to stop printing their own calendars and diaries as it led to wastage of financial resources and instead make use of those printed by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

It had said that PSUs and autonomous bodies will be supplied the diaries and calendars on a chargeable basis.