Parliament Question: Need for National Digital Preservation Policy

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF CULTURE LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 1312 ANSWERED ON 08.12.2025 NEED FOR NATIONAL DIGITAL PRESERVATION POLICY

1312. SHRI MANICKAM TAGORE B:

Will the Minister of CULTURE be pleased to state :

(a) whether it is a fact that the country still lacks a National Digital Preservation Policy despite two decades of repeated expert warnings, if so, the reasons for this delay;

(b) whether most cultural institutions continue to digitize without any uniform standards or guidelines, if so, the reasons for non-establishment of basic national protocols;

(c) whether over 80 per cent of libraries and archives reportedly lack even minimum digitization infrastructure despite ongoing digital-India claims, if so, the reasons therefor;

(d) whether the digital media deterioration and obsolete storage devices are causing irreversible loss to heritage materials, if so, the reasons for not operational preservation mechanism;

(e) whether it is also a fact that many projects collapse midway due to chronic underfunding of digitization initiatives, if so, the reason therefor; and

(f) whether the Government is aware that archivists and librarians repeatedly cite lack of technical expertise due to zero investment in training, if so, the reasons for ignorance of capacity building? ANSWER THE MINISTER OF CULTURE AND TOURISM (SHRI GAJENDRA SINGH SHEKHAWAT)

(a) National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities (NMMA) is digitizing unprotected monuments, sites & antiquities of the country as per the digitization policy of the NMMA. A depository of built heritage in the form of a user friendly mobile application named ‘Indian Heritage’ as a single access platform for protected monuments of national importance and sites has been launched in September 2023. This digital platform provides access to built heritage through features like high-resolution images, architectural details, and geo tagged locations of protected national monuments across states.

(b) The Digitization is guided by the accepted and published policy of respective organisations.

(c) The Central Archaeological Library, ASI has already digitized 12,247 books and 10 lakh pages, falling outside the copyrighted materials domain.

(d) Digitized materials of the Archaeological Survey of India are stored with the help of cloud services.

(e) The digital documentation initiative for monuments & antiquities of the ASI is currently ongoing.

(f) Librarians of the Archaeological Survey of India regularly take part in various training programmes.