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The Minister for Information & Broadcasting and Culture, Shri S. Jaipal Reddy said today that World should collectively towards creative integration of traditional cultures with economic development and modernization. Speaking at the International Network on Cultural Policy Conference in Shanghai, he said that the Government has formulated a national Mission to safeguard oral and intangible cultural heritage.
This will help document the diverse expressions of intangible culture of the people in villages and remote areas. He said the abiding wisdom in the traditional cultures needs to be harnessed and integrated with the intellectual mainstream and used for the welfare of society while ensuring that they are not exploited and their intellectual property rights are not abused. The conflict between tradition and modernization is not new. Socio-economic changes always encountered this conflict. During the industrial revolution this was a major concern. History has witnessed several such crises when change and tradition had to be reconciled. He said the current challenge in the times of globalization is unprecedented in scale. The pace of change and the magnitude of its impact is also unprecedented. With technology increasingly defining our lives and with mobility of people, goods and services becoming easier, traditional cultures find themselves in a situation, where their environment is eroded and their relevance questioned.
The major issue in this regard was how to protect traditional cultures, and to make them relevant. Traditional cultures cannot be a museum pieces. As policy makers, the challenge was to rediscover their continued relevance, utility and value in social cohesion and economic development. They have to be integrated into economic mainstream without losing their cultural identity.
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