Govt Taps Corporate Cash For Cultural Projects

India may still have a long way to go in terms of economic development, but the country has a highly developed culture.

With this as the basic philosophy, the government has extended the process of liberalisation to the hitherto moth-balled official world of culture, and has set up a National Culture Fund (NCF) to involve the private sector in official, culture-related endeavours. Set up in March with several culture czars and captains of industry as key fund managers, the NCF has evoked an `encouraging' response so far.

The department of culture in the Union ministry of human resources development has contributed Rs 19.5 crore to the fund while contributions from all over the world are in the pipeline. One of the highlights of the NCF is that, apart from the usual tax exemptions (100 per cent), contributors are allowed to specify culture-related projects which they would like to aid.

 

Using art to improve corporate image is not new, but gaining access to the vast cultural assets of the country, that too officially, is. Those on board the NCF's managing bodies include Ratan Tata, Suresh Nevatia (Gujarat Ambuja), Anil Rai (Usha), Charat Ram and M K Ramchandra. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has also offered to organise a seminar on `Culture and Industry' for the NCF.

It will now be possible for individuals and companies to sponsor activities like the restoration of monuments under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) or even those structures that are not officially protected.

We do not mind if the contributing company puts up a plaque at the site mentioning its contribution to restoring an ASI site, says culture secretary B P Singh, the brain behind the NCF.

By August 15, the department will come out with a list of culture-related projects to be offered for adoption. These will include 18 ASI sites, one each from the 18 ASI `circles' in the country. The NCF will also fund restoration work at the large number of monuments that are currently not under the ASI's care.

Some NCF activities on the cards include commissioning artists and arranging art auctions, preparing a detailed National Register of Sites and Monuments and commissioning films on eminent Indian artistes in collaboration with the National Institute of Fashion Technology.

The effort is also to ensure that gate collections at various heritage sites, monuments and museums accrue to the NCF and not to the Consolidated Fund of India as is the current practice. Funds so generated would be spent on the same museum or monument from where they are collected. The Centre and the state governments have been asked to approve the proposed measure, which is likely to prove a boon for the thousands of ill-maintained museums and monuments in the country.

Among the first contributions to the NCF from abroad are from the Buddhist countries for an ambitious, multi-crore plan to set up Buddhist cultural complexes, or `viharas', at four places: Udaigiri-Lalitgiri (Orissa); Bodhgaya, Vaishali and Nalanda in Bihar. Each `vihara' will have a network of facilities, including a museum the size of the National Museum in Delhi, a thematic library with computer facilities, and a research institute.