Parliamentary panel flags slow rate of digitisation of manuscripts

A parliamentary panel has flagged the slow rate of digitisation of manuscripts under the flagship Gyan Bharatam Mission launched last year. It has said that the targets set by the mission are attainable only if “force multipliers” such as citizen participation at national scale and machine assistance are utilised.

Gyan Bharatam is a flagship initiative of the Ministry of Culture aimed at the identification, documentation, conservation, digitisation, preservation, and promotion of India’s vast manuscript heritage. It was formally launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 11, 2025, but had been announced earlier that year during the Union Budget 2025-26. The mission mandate is to preserve and establish a dedicated digital platform to share India’s manuscript heritage across the globe, named the National Digital Repository (NDR).

The mission had set a target of digitisation of one crore manuscripts by 2030. However, according to the report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, tabled in the Rajya Sabha earlier this week, only 7.5 lakh texts have been digitised so far.

“The government has stated the ambition of digitising one crore manuscripts within five years, and the evidence before the Committee recorded a target of 20 lakh by 31 March 2027,” the report titled “From Manuscript to Mission: Preserving, Mapping and Sustaining India’s Cultural Heritage in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” said.

The report further said that while the current pace, computed from the Ministry’s successive official statements, has been around 33,000 manuscripts each month, the target stood at one and a half lakh manuscripts.

“The targets are attainable precisely if, and only if, force multipliers are brought to bear… Citizen participation at national scale, capture standards that avoid rework, and machine assistance directed at the narrowest bottlenecks are those multipliers,” it said.

The committee has also noted the 17-fold increase in the cost of the process. The financial commitment to the Mission has risen from the ₹3.50 crore sanctioned in 2024-25 to ₹15 crore in 2025-26 and ₹60 crore in 2026-27, within a sanctioned outlay of ₹491.66 crore for 2025-2031, it said.

The committee has recommended that the Mission spend the expenditure already provided instead of seeking fresh funding.