Sadanand Menon: 'Culture' stays orphaned in the cabinet

Five thousand years is, obviously, too long. Those who claim such classical longevity for ‘Indian culture’, in particular the Indian State, seem now to be in a hurry to chuck off the protective mask they have been wearing all these years. Issues relating to arts and culture seem to be orphaned, without guardians in the new government.

One of the sore points, of course, is the fact that even so many months after the 15 th Lok Sabha was constituted and a new Cabinet was put in place, it still lacks a ‘minister for culture’. For some time, the art community rejoiced in the fact that the Prime Minister himself chose to retain the portfolio. It made people believe that the CEO of India Inc considered the ministry too important to farm it away. There was expectation that the PM would make dramatic interventions in an area that has conventionally been treated as an orphan since Independence. However, very soon it was evident that the PM’s retention of the portfolio, far from being a sign of wisdom, was merely a demonstration of the bankruptcy of any fresh idea.

 

For a long time, culture was appended to the Ministry of Education and survived the first four decades since Independence almost on 0.5 per cent to 0.8 per cent of the already miniscule annual budget allocation for education. During the Rajiv Gandhi era, the State suddenly discovered that ‘culture was an arm of diplomacy’ and it got pulled into the human resources development ministry with a beefing up of budgets in keeping with the philosophy of supplying people with a surfeit of grand utsavs and melas and spectacles to keep them entertained and distracted from their daily miseries. Another decade down the line, within a liberalised economy, the real ‘value’ of culture was discovered to be its commodity nature and its market value and it was comically married off to the tourism ministry.

But today everyone realises that culture is no longer just diplomacy or commerce. Culture is both, a new and potentially profitable industry on the horizon (the idea of creative and cultural industries) as well as a subtle instrument of war. No wonder the PM chose to retain it along with other critical portfolios like planning, water resources, space and atomic energy. The obvious feeling was that with the 2010 Commonwealth Games round the corner, culture needed closer commandeering to meet the needs of projecting India as a new super-power.

However, as usual, the puffed up projections of the Indian State usually burst sooner or later, like the new revelations about the fizzle-out of the Indian atomic tests. The Indian moon mission has (hooray!) been able to spot water on the moon. But in six decades of Independence at least a hundred million Indian women can’t spot potable water anywhere within five kilometers of their homes. Just twelve months away, the Commonwealth Games is turning out to be a money-soaking and environment wrecking enterprise. But equally appalling are the ‘preparations’ towards confecting an inaugural and a closing ceremony for the games. The tatty and filmy- show India put up at the conclusion of the 2006 Melbourne games has not taught us any lessons. Just a couple of months ago, a new committee was created dominated by the Mumbai film industry and the advertising community. The committee still seems to be struggling to figure out the focus for the high-profile inaugural, beyond the banalities of wanting to project ‘Indian spirituality’, ‘unity in diversity’ and ‘youth power’.

The absence of a ‘ministry of culture’ is palpable. Institutions that would come within the ambit of such a ministry like the three Akademis, the National School of Drama, the National Galleries of Modern Art etc, too are performing lackadaisically. The Central Advisory Board on Culture (CABC), constituted in July 2008, has met only once — in November that year — where Ambika Soni, the then minister of state, revealed there were over 1,500 vacancies in the museums under the Department of Culture, mainly due to a dearth of qualified candidates.

In fact, most national institutions are run by people who have pretty little competence to handle these posts. For example, the seven Zonal Cultural Centers are headed by IAS officers on short, three year-terms. It would be no exaggeration to say that hundreds of specialised personnel are urgently required to run these institutions. The NGMA, Bangalore, inaugurated in February, 2009, is languishing from a crippling tight-leash from Delhi and committees that have not met in months. The NSD has unceremoniously shelved the recommendations of a ‘high power committee’ to provide a ‘vision statement’ to the institution.

Such grievances are piling up across the country and reaching a crescendo. If the PM is also the Culture Minister, he better leave the Naxalites alone for a moment and turn his attention this way. Lack of a coherent cultural direction too can pose a grave internal security threat.