Mera Gaon Meri Dharohar Program

In News

• In a bid to harness the unique cultural heritage of rural India, the government has identified and documented distinctive features of more than one lakh villages across the country.
  • The entire exercise has been carried out under the ‘ Mera Gaon Meri Dharohar‘ (My Village My Heritage) programme of the National Mission for Cultural Mapping (NMCM).

National Mission for Cultural Mapping (NMCM)

• The National Mission for Cultural Mapping (NMCM) aims to develop a comprehensive database of art forms, artists and other resources across the country. 
• It was launched by the Ministry of Culture in 2017, the programme got off to a slow start and was handed over to the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) in 2021.
  • IGNCA was established in 1987 as an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Culture, as a centre for research, academic pursuit and dissemination in the field of the arts.
• The IGNCA plans to cover all the 6.5 lakh villages in the country. As of today, short films have been made on 750 clusters villages. The films, which give a 360 degree view of the village, have been shot using drones.

Significance & Need

• The program seeks to document the cultural identity at the village level by involving citizens to share what makes their village, block, or district unique.
• In this cultural asset mapping, villages have been broadly divided into seven-eight categories based on whether they are important ecologically, developmentally and scholastically, if they produce a famous textile or product, and if they are connected to some historical or mythological events such as the Independence struggle or epics like the Mahabharata.
• The mapping aims to develop a comprehensive database of art forms, artists, and other resources across the country.

About the survey process 

• The survey process involves a CSC Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE) conducting meetings with locals and then uploading interesting facts about their village, its places of interest, customs and traditions, famous personalities, festivals and beliefs, art and culture, etc., on to a special application.

Source: TH