Ministry of Culture implements “Global Engagement Scheme" to promote India's rich cultural heritage internationally and enhance India's global image.

The key Scheme objectives include strengthening cultural ties with foreign nations, promoting bilateral cultural contacts, projecting India’s cultural identity on the world stage and encouraging inbound tourism. The Global Engagement Scheme is administered through Indian Missions abroad to achieve its objective through following components:

 

1. Festival of India:

 

The artists practicing Indian art forms, are given opportunity to perform abroad under the banner of ‘Festival of India’. The artists from diverse cultural fields such as Folk Art including Folk Music, Folk Dance, Folk Theatre & Puppetry, Classical and Traditional Dance, Experimental/Contemporary Dance, Classical/Semi Classical Music, Theatre etc. perform in the ‘Festivals of India’ abroad.

 

2. Grant in aid to Indo Foreign Friendship Cultural Societies:

 

Grant in aid is released to Indo Foreign Friendship Cultural Societies actively functioning in foreign counties through our Indian Missions with the object of fostering closer friendship and cultural contacts between India and foreign country concerned.

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), an autonomous organisation under Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), promotes Indian culture (including folk arts & culture) worldwide through its Cultural Centres and Missions/Posts abroad. Activities conducted by them include inter-alia, teaching of Yoga, Dance, Music (vocal and instrumental), Sanskrit and Hindi; organising/supporting Conferences/ Seminars/ Workshops in different fields of Indian culture; supporting Chairs of Indian Studies in foreign universities; gifting of busts/statues of Mahatma Gandhi and other national icons, exchanging visual arts exhibitions, celebrating International Day of Yoga and Indian festivals, hosting visitors under various Visitors Programmes (Academic / Distinguished /Important /Gen. Next Democracy Network); and sponsoring scholarships to foreign students under different scholarship schemes.

ICCR has also concluded MoUs with various State Governments to promote their culture abroad and to facilitate cultural exchanges with foreign countries. ICCR also hosts incoming foreign cultural troupes to enable Indians to discover various foreign cultures.

Ministry of Culture has empaneled 627 artists/groups under various art forms and artists are selected from the empaneled list for deputing to perform in the Festivals of India abroad. The Folk artists are paid performance fee @ Rs. 35,000/- (to leader/main artist) and @ Rs. 7000/- (to accompanying artist) for each performance in Festival of India.

Also, the Ministry of Culture administers a Scheme by the name of ‘Financial Assistance for Veteran Artists’ with the objective to support old and poor artists aged 60 and above, who have contributed significantly in their specialized fields of arts, letters including folk art or are still contributing. Financial assistance under this scheme is provided maximum up to Rs. 6000/- per month to the selected artists after adjusting the amount of State artists pension received, if any.

This information was given by Union Minister for Culture and Tourism Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.

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Sunil Kumar Tiwari

pibculture[at]gmail[dot]com

 

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