Gyan Bharatam Mission: Onboarding of Manuscript Cluster/Independent Centers and progress of National Manuscript Survey
Ministry of Culture reports onboarding progress under the Gyan Bharatam Mission and updates from the National Manuscript Survey launched in March 2026.
- GBM supports a network of Cluster Centers and Independent Centers to run manuscript work using financial grant-in-aid.
- National Manuscript Survey was launched across all States and Union Territories to identify and document manuscript holdings, repositories, and custodians by diverse languages and scripts.
- Grant-in-aid under GBM is meant for manuscript-related activities like identification, documentation, conservation, digitisation, research, publication, and dissemination.
- GBM onboarding for eligible repositories is subject to physical verification and institutional readiness, including availability of resources and funds.
What happened: GBM centre onboarding and National Manuscript Survey progress
The Ministry of Culture reports progress under the Gyan Bharatam Mission (GBM) and updates from the National Manuscript Survey in a Lok Sabha written reply by Union Minister for Culture and Tourism Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat.
GBM is mandated to establish a nation-wide network of Cluster Centers (CCs) and Independent Centers (ICs) across India. Government communication states that GBM centres receive financial assistance as grant-in-aid to undertake manuscript-related activities such as cataloguing, conservation, digitisation, and publication.
UPSC can frame GBM as an implementation chain: centre onboarding (CCs/ICs using grant-in-aid) leads to discovery and documentation through the National Manuscript Survey, which then leads to digitisation and public access through the Gyan Bharatam portal. The Lok Sabha-reported numbers can be used to test whether scaling of resources aligns with digitisation and portal availability.
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