The Ministry of Culture introduced in November, 2009, a new scheme by the name of “Visiting Fellows in Art, Culture & Heritage”. Later, to mark the Commemoration of the 150th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, the scheme was renamed as “Tagore National Fellowship for Cultural Research”.The objective of this prestigious scheme was to invigorate and revitalize the various institutions under the Ministry of Culture which have vast ‘treasures’ in the form of manuscripts, documents, artifacts, antiquities and paintings. It was meant to encourage serious researches into our cultural resources so that the nation stands to benefits from the results. Museums, for instance, could hardly display more than a small percentage of their entire holdings and they could use this scheme to encourage research and analysis of the objects that are not usually available for public viewing or use.
