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For the longest time it has been argued that India woefully lacked a national culture policy. Ironically, the formulation of such a policy has been opposed by several committees set up by the Ministry of Culture itself for the express intention of designing such a policy. In June 2008, after several meetings held at taxpayers’ expense, yet another such committee of luminaries declared to the media that Indians were a disparate community, that there was hardly anything common between a Kashmiri and a Malayali or a Gujarati and a Mizo in terms of their culture and hence there was no need for a homogenised policy that served them all. The usual apprehensions of a unified or majoritarian imposition of cultural standards were expressed and the committee had a quiet, unsung burial.

As an artist and writer myself, this deeply bothered me. I shared this lament with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom we were privileged to meet at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Modi was most sympathetic to the idea and asked me to put my thoughts together in a concept note and share it with the Minister of Culture and/or the NITI Aayog for further action.

For any meaningful discussion on cultural policy or cultural activity in a country as vast and diverse as India, it is no doubt essential to keep in mind the complex, multi-layered and multi-dimensional cultural fabric of this country, which despite its diversities is united by that single intangible thread of Indianness, which defies definitions and boundaries.

A culture policy for a diverse nation like India (or for that matter any country, as my study revealed) is in no way an attempt to homogenise the country’s culture – an act, which is anyway impossible through mere legislations or executive decisions. After all, the more than 5,000-year-old civilisational history and culture of India has borne numerous challenges to be shaken by such a policy document. A policy of this kind is not even an attempt to define what the culture of India needs to be. In my view, a national culture policy needs to look broadly at effective ways of managing, promoting, preserving and showcasing this rich and vibrant culture and handle the economics of the culture ‘industry’ through a variety of innovative initiatives, new participation, governmental incentives, funding and public private partnership (PPP) models.

Based on this premise, I set out here to list a few elements of what such a policy might encompass. These salient features of a culture policy are independent of political agendas and ideologies and instead seek to put in place a robust and efficient system to run the culture industry in India – a crying need for decades now considering the rot that has set in, in most of the government-run cultural organisations. The culture policy can be seen as an area of intersection between activities and initiatives of various ministries of the government of India, such as Ministry of External Affairs, Human Resource and Development, Tourism, Commerce and Industry, Textiles, Small-scale and Agro Industries etc, and not necessarily just the Ministry of Culture (MoC).

1. Complete overhaul, rationalisation and effective management of existing cultural bodies coming under the government of India.

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2. Enhancement of funding for India’s cultural industry through new participation models, including PPP.

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3. Inclusion of the cultural element among young minds by broad-basing the education system to inculcate a sense of national identity, pride and self-worth.

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4. Looking at culture as a profit centre that provides jobs to people, enables skill development and vocational training and finds effective markets for the wares of artisans, weavers, artists, painters and craftsmen of the country in traditional and contemporary arts and crafts in both national and international platforms.

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5. Clear roadmap to integrate culture to tourism initiatives and boost the country’s rich but latent, tourism potential.

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6. Institutions for dissemination of cultural knowledge to the public at large through various media; Online being the biggest backbone for a “Digital India”.

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7. Showcase and educate the international community about the best of India’s culture, heritage, traditional knowledge, performing and visual arts.

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While it is essential that we become an economic and military super-power, I guess we would be a highly impoverished nation if, after a generation, our cultural heritage and identity is lost. As mentioned earlier, culture is not always about doling out grants, holding mega-festivals, or just about sob stories around lack of preservation. The economics of culture and the way it can enhance skills, augment jobs, and add to the country’s might by being both a profitable industry and also as soft-power diplomacy needs innovative and out of the box thinking.

As advised by the Prime Minister, I did meet the Minister of Culture and shared a much more detailed concept note (of which this article is a mere excerpt), as also with the NITI Aayog. But sadly, is anyone out there interested at all or are they listening?