Union Budget 2025 | Two ambitious digital projects launched to conserve manuscripts

The government would also set up a National Digital Repository of Indian knowledge systems for knowledge sharing.

New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government will undertake two ambitious digital projects -- Gyan Bharatam Mission and Bharatiya Bhasha Pustak Scheme -- to conserve over one crore manuscripts spread across academic institutions, museums and private collectors and make available Indian language books in digital form for school and college students.

Announcing the schemes in her Union Budget speech in Lok Sabha on Saturday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the 'Gyan Bharatam Mission' is for undertaking a "survey, documentation and conservation" of India's manuscript heritage lying with academic institutions, museums, libraries and private collectors. The project is aimed at covering over one crore manuscripts.

She said the government would set up a National Digital Repository of Indian knowledge systems for knowledge sharing. The budget allocation for National Manuscripts Mission (NMM), whose aim is to identify and document manuscripts and make the manuscript heritage accessible across the country, has been hiked from Rs 3.5 crore to Rs 60 crore.

The announcement of the scheme came as the Ministry of Culture had last year prepared the ground for relaunching the NMM, which was set up in 2003 but had not taken off as expected. The NMM has a metadata of 52 lakh manuscripts, of which only around three lakh titles were digitised though only 20% of it is available digitally.

The new mission is also expected to attract private persons and institutions to share the manuscripts, as it could provide some incentive for them. A large majority of manuscripts are in the custody of private players.

Separately, Sitharaman also announced 'Bharatiya Bhasha Pustak Scheme' to provide digital-form Indian language books for school and higher education. "This aims to help students understand their subjects better," she said.

Describing it as a "welcome initiative" to ensure access to digital learning resources in Indian languages, UGC Chairman Prof M Jagadeesh said a substantial increase in funding for the ‘Indian Knowledge System’ from Rs 10 crore to Rs 50 crore will empower researchers and institutions to explore further, document, and disseminate India's invaluable intellectual contributions. 

“This move will significantly boost UGC's efforts to prepare 22,000 textbooks for undergraduate and postgraduate studies in 22 Indian languages," he said.

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