To promote art and culture, Indian Railways are planning to set up film cities and studios across the country to impart training to deserving railway employees and their wards.
To promote art and culture, Indian Railways are planning to set up film cities and studios across the country to impart training to deserving railway employees and their wards.
The proposed film cities and studios will be developed through public-private partnership model by the railways at locations to be identified by a railway committee headed by noted theatre personality Saonli Mitra.
Besides film cities and studios, railways will also develop art galleries and handicraft centres at major stations, a senior railway ministry official associated with the newly-constituted Railway Committee on Heritage and Culture told PTI.
The basic purpose is to set up professional institutions and cultural centres through PPP model for providing training and promoting these creative art forms, he said and added, "such institutes will impart training to deserving railway employees, their wards and also to outsiders."
On art gallery at railway stations, the official said it is not necessary that a separate enclosure will be created at platforms but the existing waiting halls and pillars can be utilised for art works.
Art galleries are existing at all major stations in Europe and Canada and this can be done here too, he said.
The committee will also explore possibility of introducing "moving libraries" in some premier trains. Railways have recently constituted the eight-member committee on heritage and culture, first of its kind, to recommend various measures to strengthen, upgrade and proliferate cultural activities.
Besides Mitra, other members of the committee included renowned film director Rituparno Ghosh and eminent vocalist Ustad Rashid Khan.
Mitra had a series of meetings with concerned railway officials to chalk out the action plan. Mitra also met culture secretary Jawahar Sircar and Indian Council for Cultural Relations DG Virendra Gupta in the capital last week to showcase Indian Railways' heritage and culture through exhibitions to be held in India and suggest holding of similar cultural programmes abroad.
The panel will also suggest directions for holding cultural seminars, talk shows, TV programmes and making and showing of documentary films on various aspects of Indian Railways and Indian culture and heritage.
Annual awards will be instituted to felicitate prominent personalities from different fields of performing arts, literature and the fine arts.
The committee will examine the existing systems and recommend promotion of professional publications including periodicals, magazines and websites on different cultural issues.
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