Mera Gaon Mera Dharohar Programme, Scheme and Function

Mera Gaon Mera Dharohar Programme is the national mission on cultural mapping to be initiated by the Government of India, to be conducted in coordination with the Ministry of Culture and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA). Under this programme, cultural mapping around 6.5 lakhs will be carried out.

The Mera Gaon Mera Dharohar Initiative looks to compile comprehensive information detailing the life, history, and culture of the Indian villages so that it can be made available to virtual and real-time visitors.

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Mera Gaon Mera Dharohar Programme Overview

The Ministry of Culture had established the National Mission on Cultural Mapping (NMCM) to preserve and promote India’s rich cultural heritage. As a part of the ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’, NMCM also launched the Mera Gaon Mera Dharohar (MGMD) portal in June 2023. The programme is focused on documenting the cultural heritage of 6.5 lakh Indian villages. At present, the cultural portfolio of 4.7 lakh Indian villages is live on the portal.

Objectives of Mera Gaon Mera Dharohar Programme

The MGMD programme is being conducted in coordination with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) under the Ministry of Culture. The programme compiles important information about all the Indian villages, covering different aspects of life, values, and history on the portal that can be made accessible to both real-time and virtual visitors. The information about the Indian villages is compiled under the following seven categories:

• Arts and Crafts Village

• Architectural Heritage Village

• Ecologically Oriented Village

• Historical Village connected with local and national history

• Scholastic village linked with Textual and Scriptural traditions of India

• Epic Villages, linked to Ramayana, Mahabharata or Puranic legends.

• Any other feature that may need to be highlighted, including fishing villages, horticulture villages, shepherding villages, etc.

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What is National Mission on Cultural Mapping?

The National Mission on Cultural Mapping was established by Ministry of Culture to recognise and document India’s cultural heritage and the creative potential it holds to regenerate rural economies and make Indian villages self-reliant. The cultural mapping undertaken by NMCM functions at three different levels:

• National Directories of artists and living human treasures of cultural industries.

• National Digital Inventories of art expression and artist communities.

• Creating policies towards the preservation of different art practices and developing welfare schemes for their creators.

The objective of the mission is to create a national database through cultural mapping through extensive ground surveys and documentation. It also focuses on preserving, safeguarding, revitalising, and disseminating the rich cultural heritage of he country for future generations.

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