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The Gyan Bharatam Mission (GBM) has onboarded a nationwide network of Cluster Centres (CCs) and Independent Centres (ICs) for manuscript conservation, digitisation and research, Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat told Lok Sabha on 27 July 2026.
The National Manuscript Survey, launched in March 2026 across all States and UTs, has reported over 1.19 crore manuscripts so far; more than 8 lakh have been digitised, of which 3.90 lakh are viewable on the Gyan Bharatam portal.
GBM's sanctioned budget has risen from Rs 3.50 crore in 2024-25 to Rs 60 crore in 2026-27, and its portal now runs AI tools — Gyan Mitram, BharatiyaGPT and Pandulipi Darpan — for script recognition, translation and search.
Pan-India identification, documentation, conservation, digitisation, research, publication and dissemination of India's manuscript heritage, irrespective of script, language, dialect, tradition, community or geography
Key: A framework of Cluster Centres (CCs) and Independent Centres (ICs) — 47 onboarded so far across most States/UTs — given grant-in-aid for manuscript-related work; centres are selected on collection size, institutional capacity, manpower/infrastructure and regional representation
GBM is the reorganised and significantly expanded successor of NAMAMI, the mission set up in 2003 to locate, document, conserve and digitise India's manuscripts
Key: NAMAMI has functioned under the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA); its sharp budget jump (Rs 3.5 crore to Rs 60 crore) mirrors its relaunch as GBM
A nationwide door-to-door style survey to identify and document manuscript holdings, repositories and custodians across languages and scripts
Key: Launched March 2026; over 1.19 crore manuscripts reported so far, but Parliament was told no district-wise numerical target was fixed for it
Autonomous institution under the Ministry of Culture for research, academic pursuit and dissemination in the arts; has historically housed the National Mission for Manuscripts
As stated in the companion Lok Sabha reply, the Gyan Bharatam Web Portal uses AI technologies — Large Language Script Models (LLSM), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), script recognition, semantic search and machine-assisted translation. Gyan Mitram is the portal's AI-powered knowledge interface for interpreting and exploring manuscripts. BharatiyaGPT offers 'Manuscript-to-Conversational AI', including a 'Talk to Manuscript' voice feature. Pandulipi Darpan lets a user upload a digitised manuscript image for AI-assisted script recognition, transliteration and translation.
Simple Analogy: Together they work like a multilingual OCR-plus-chatbot pipeline: OCR/HTR read the handwritten script, LLSM and semantic search make sense of it, and the chat interface lets a researcher 'ask' the manuscript questions in plain language.
GS Paper 1 > Art & Culture > Manuscripts; GS Paper 3 > Science & Tech > AI Applications
Which one of the following issues the 'Global Economic Prospects' report periodically?
Answer: The World Bank
Recurring — manuscript/heritage-digitisation schemes have featured multiple times in 2025-26 current affairs
National Mission for Manuscripts, set up in 2003 under IGNCA; reorganised into the Gyan Bharatam Mission
Institutions onboarded under GBM to carry out manuscript cataloguing, conservation and digitisation with grant-in-aid support