Context: The Prime Minister of India launched the revamped National Manuscripts Mission under the title of ‘Gyan Bharatam Mission’.

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• It aims to survey, document, and conserve over one crore manuscripts across institutions, libraries, museums, and private collections.
• The revamped mission led by the Culture Ministry will likely function as a new autonomous organisation, distinct from the earlier structure.
• Expert consultations to redesign the mission began in October 2024, National Mission for Manuscripts. 
• To accommodate the ‘Gyan Bharatam Mission’, budget allocation for the National Manuscripts Mission (NMM) has been hiked from ₹3.5 crore to ₹60 crore.

National Manuscripts Mission 

• NMM was originally launched in 2003 under the aegis of Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
• It has digitised Three Lakh Fifty Thousand manuscripts so far in different repositories. 
• The Mission is preserving all types of manuscripts across the nation, scribed on different materials with the help of its Manuscripts Conservation Centres.
• The NMM has till date, prepared a metadata of 52 lakh manuscripts and roughly over three lakh titles have been digitised. However, only one-third of them have been i.e out of 1,36,490 manuscripts, 77,152 manuscripts are available for public access. 
• The Ministry of Culture under the aegis of Gyan Bharatam Mission is committed to expand NMM outreach through public exhibitions or digital platform extensively.