Mission to map rural India’s cultural assets covers over one lakh villages

n a bid to harness the unique cultural heritage of rural India, the government has identified and documented distinctive features of more than one lakh villages across the country.

In a bid to harness the unique cultural heritage of rural India, the government has identified and documented distinctive features of more than one lakh villages across the country.

In this cultural asset mapping, villages have been broadly divided into seven-eight categories based on whether they are important ecologically, developmentally and scholastically, if they produce a famous textile or product, and if they are connected to some historical or mythological events such as the Independence struggle or epics like the Mahabharata.

The ecological category, for example, includes the Bishnoi village near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, which is a case study for living in harmony with nature, and Uttarakhand’s Raini village, which is famous for the Chipko movement.

There are also villages which have developmental importance like Modhera in Gujarat, which is the first solar-powered village in India.

The villages under the historical category include Kandel in Madhya Pradesh, the site of the famous ‘Jal Satyagraha’, and the villages of Hanol in Uttarakhand and Vidurashwathar of Karnataka, which are linked to the Mahabharata.

Suketi in Himachal Pradesh, Asia’s oldest fossil park, and Pandrethan in Kashmir, the village of Shaivite mystic Lal Ded, are also classified for their historical importance.

The entire exercise has been carried out under the ‘ Mera Gaon Meri Dharohar‘ (My Village My Heritage) programme of the National Mission for Cultural Mapping (NMCM).