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Unit 8: News and Magazine Articles

2. The State of the Arts Notes

Vidya Shah
The very mention of Indian culture brings to mind its sheer diversity both in form and content.
But this mental picture is quite different from how narrowly we view it now. Today, there is
a tendency to homogenise— like running a road-roller over the cultural fabric of India. While
mass media— largely television and cinema— has usurped most of our attention, culture, in
the more conventional sense of live performance, is also fast gaining a glamour quotient. One
does see more imagination being put into programming and venues today. Can we, then, stop
lamenting about how Indian culture is deteriorating? Perhaps not till we’ve found answers to
some pressing questions: Whose responsibility is it to safeguard culture? Who will be the patron?
Can the thousands for whom their art form is their livelihood survive? And are they surviving
now?
Some of these concerns saw a silver lining in a report released recently by the review committee
of the zonal cultural centres (ZCCS) under the ministry of culture— in its silver jubilee year,

significantly. The ZCCS, created under Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership, are located in seven
cities across the country. They were set up with the intention of bringing India’s resurgent
cultures to its masses and, in this spirit, they were not situated in state capitals, but in smaller
cities with an important connection to culture. So, Thanjavur instead of Chennai, Shantiniketan
and not Calcutta.
Initially, several promising objectives were put in place— delink the ZCCS from state politics,
promote financial independence, encourage young and up-and-coming artists— and some good

did come of it. The Shilpgram, a first-of-its-kind, one-stop crafts and culture village, defied its low

budget to become a “must see” when in Udaipur. The Manganiyar singers are another success
story. ‘Discovered’ by the ZCCS, they now perform internationally extensively.
The review report, an extensive undertaking under the chairmanship of Mani Shankar Aiyar,
consulted eminent artists from across the country and concluded that the centres have seen a
steady decline in the quality of their content, their promotion of art and their encouragement of
artists — contravening the very purpose of their existence. It admits acerbically that the centres

have, over the years, become excessively bureaucratised, insufficiently creative and essentially
extensions of their state’s department of culture. The folk and tribal forms are worse off than
ever before with newer generations having to eschew their traditional skills and become migrant
labourers to survive.
Ironically, we need these institutions because the onus is on the State to look after these artists
and art forms and to provide platforms for their performance, and because there exist, quite
simply, no alternative survival mechanisms.
The re-engineering of the ZCCS has to be a reformative exercise at several levels. The review
committee’s recommendations, including the setting up of an Indian Council for Zonal Centres,
cutting down on major infrastructural expenditures (raising the centres’ corpus funds to Rs 50
crore each), increasing performance budgets, cultural audits to control corruption, improving
documentation and archiving by bringing in the requisite expertise, have the potential to address
existing issues. The committee stressed the need to support folk and tribal cultures through a
revamped Guru-Shishya Parampara scheme, which will assure talented but indigent artistes to
secure livelihoods through such proposed initiatives as a Folk and Tribal Arts Akademi (and
National Museum).
While the report’s recommendations are quite comprehensive, it also supports the creation of
superstructures and big budgets for cultural management. In a country like India, which has an
array of art forms that is as diverse as it is extensive, it remains to be seen how low-cost models

can be created. Also, if the youth are to be engaged, then there is a need to find a synthesis
between fast-paced change-oriented technologies and the cultural traditions of communities.

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