Cultural interaction between tribals of two diverse states is going to be one of the key highlights of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unique initiative of enhancing interaction between people living in different states, titled “Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat,” which is likely to be formally launched on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s birthday on October 31, which is also known as Rashtriya Ekta Divas (National Integration Day).
Government’s think tank Niti Aayog and Union culture ministry are busy giving finishing touches to its final blueprint and have held several parleys in the past few weeks to ensure its formal launch.
The programme will promote cultural exchanges between villagers, tribals as well as students of different states, to create awareness about each others’ heritage.
Sources privy to the development told this newspaper that while the culture ministry has already conducted the cultural mapping of the country, the Niti Aayog is learnt to have suggested to the PMO that tribals from culturally divergent states could be made to interact with each other so that they can imbibe each other’s primitive and age-old practices and adopt the best practices.
Even students from northern states could be made to interact with their counterparts from a southern state for a period of one year.
Mr Modi, during his address on the occasion of Rashtriya Ekta Divas last year, had proposed to launch the new initiative. Subsequently the Government had in December 2015 sought innovative suggestions from people through its “MyGov” portal on what kind of characteristics the campaign will have.
Also, the government had organised a workshop (conducted by Union culture ministry) in April this year, where culture minister Mahesh Sharma and Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant interacted with officials of several states and representatives of many cultural organisations to finalise the roadmap for the initiative.
The Prime Minister had last year, while proposing the scheme, given the example of how Haryana could select Tamil Nadu for a year. Haryana school students could interact with Tamil Nadu students and even visit the southern state. Schools in Haryana could be made to learn at least learn 100 sentences in Tamil during that period.
Sources added that Niti Aayog is said to have suggested to the PMO that since cultural intermingling any way happens through educational institutions where students from all over the country study together, therefore certain overlapping elements could be eliminated from the scheme. Also the think tank has advised that there should be a control on the budget of the scheme and it should not be too extravagant, sources added.
Among some interesting suggestions given by people to the Government included holding primarily north Indian festivals like Navratri (garba dance etc.) in southern states and simultaneously festivals pertaining to southern states could be organised in the North.
Funding of these festivals could be done by the concerned communities in each others’ states.
Another suggestion was connecting smart cities of two culturally diverse states digitally so that they can imbibe ideas about each others’ cultures. Also, corporations and municipal bodies of these cities could be involved in the process.
