New Delhi: In the year of commemoration of the birth centenary of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, who hailed from Mathura district in Uttar Pradesh, the Ministry of Culture, Government of India is launching the implementation of the ‘‘National Mission on Cultural Mapping of India’ at Goverdhan Block, Mathura District, Uttar Pradesh in a day long, Block level mega talent hunt programme (Sanskritik Pratibha Khoj Samaroh) on 17th June, 2017 from 10 am to 5 pm at Radheshyam Sewa Sadan (in front of Gaudiya Math), Radha Kund Road, Gowardhan. The programme will be inaugurated by the Minister of State (Independent charge) for Culture & Tourism Dr. Mahesh Sharma, in the august presence of the Ministers of Uttar Pradesh having their constituency in Mathura District, MP and MLAs of Mathura District, Ministry’s Senior officials and various renowned artists including Padma, Sangeet Natak Akademi and State Awardees. This Mission is part of the ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat’ umbrella.
Around 1-2 thousand artists are expected to take part in this Block level event where artists can also register themselves following which a registration certificate/slip/code will be provided to all the artists who register. A stage will be provided to the registered artists for performance and displaying their talent. A panel of renowned artists has also been invited for judging the participants in different art forms. Registration can also be done directly on the portal culturalmappingofindia.nic.in. For those artists who, for some reason, are not able to register themselves and their art forms, enumeration teams have been sent to all the 47 villages of Gowardhan Block for geo mapping of artists and their art forms. Any person who claims to be an artist can register at the initial level.
Paving the way for the ‘Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat’ programme led by the Hon’ble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, the mission aims at converting the vast and widespread cultural canvas of India into an objective cultural map, designing a mechanism to fulfil the aspirations of the whole artist community of the nation and preserving the rich cultural heritage of this country in the form of a cultural repository of artists and art forms.
This Mission encompasses data mapping, demography building formalising the processes and bringing all the cultural activities under one web based umbrella for better results. The Mission also seeks to open a direct channel of communication of artists with the Government and peer to peer communication among artists for talent honing and handholding of each other.
With a vision that no cultural talent or heritage should remain unattended and if it is talent, it should be nurtured and if it is a heritage, it should be conserved and used as an icon to learn from the past, and also to propagate our cultural talent across all boundaries, the Ministry has planned to hold talent hunt competitions with various rounds from Block level to National level. The scheme is set to cover all the Blocks of the Country, involving a total of 6.40 Lakh villages over the span of next 3 years.
The Ministry is eying to launch massive cultural awareness campaigns so that no artist is left behind. The Artist/Organisations also may register online at www.culturalmapping.nic.in. The Cultural Mapping of India portal will serve as a repository/consolidated database of information about cultural assets and resources i.e. a cultural inventory at one place for essential planning, sustainable economic development and for preserving the scattered and near extinct art forms.
Immediately after this event in Mathura district, the Ministry of Culture will be organising similar Block level events in other States too so as to kick start the process of scaling up the efforts to cover all the Blocks of the Country. The current round includes Shimoga Block in Shimoga District, Karnataka, Thanesar Block in Kurukshetra District, Haryana, Chauri – Chaura Block in Gorakhpur District in Uttar Pradesh & Saraikela Block in Saraikela – Kharsawan District in Jharkhand.
