Gyan Bharatam Mission

Prelims: Current events of national and international importance

Why in News?

Recently union government has launched Gyan Bharatam Mission, a major initiative for digitization of manuscripts.

A manuscript is a handwritten composition on paper, bark, cloth, metal, palm leaf or any other material dating back at least seventy-five years that has significant scientific, historical or aesthetic value. Lithographs and printed volumes are not manuscripts.

• Aim – To Survey, Document, Conserve, Digitize, and make accessible more than One Crore Manuscripts located in academic Institutions, Museums, Libraries, and Private collections across India to people.
• To revive its civilizational knowledge traditions for future generations.
• Ministry – Ministry of Culture.
• Under – National Manuscripts Mission (NMM).

• Key objectives – Digitize and catalog more than 10 million manuscripts nationwide.
• Create a National Digital Repository for manuscripts.
• Incorporate Articificial Intelligence, OCR (Optical Character Recognition – technology that converts different types of documents, images, PDFs into machine-readable text),
• blockchain technologies to enable smart access, transcription, and tracking of origins.

Around 80% of manuscripts in India are with private parties.

• Strategic pillars & implementation plan- Scholarly leadership & institutional development – Led by experts in Indology, philology, and conservation.
• Establish a full-time Director (CEO) and a multidisciplinary team.
• Technological integration – Create an AI-assisted platform for digitizing manuscripts.
• Utilize blockchain for provenance tracking and cloud storage for preservation.
• Develop APIs (Application Programming Interface) for connecting with national and international manuscript archives.
• Conservation & capacity building – Set up new labs for conserving palm leaf, birch bark, and paper manuscripts.
• Launch "Pandulipi Mitras," a network of trained volunteers in around 100 districts.
• Public engagement – Create educational modules for schools and universities.
• Offer immersive Virtual Reality/Augumented Reality experiences highlighting manuscript heritage.
• Organize Manuscript Melas and national social media campaigns.
• Timeline Overview (2025–2031) – Phase 1 – Institutional setup, pilot digitization, and training.
• Phase 2 – Launch national repository and activate tech platforms.
• Phase 3 – Expand outreach and integrate with manuscript archives.

Reference

1. PIB| Gyan Bharatam Mission
2. Ministry of culture| GBM