Culture Ministry to Grade 1 Crore Writers, Artists on Popularity

Artists will be graded Outstanding, Promising and Waiting on the basis of popularity, age and experience.

Kathak exponent Shovana Narayan has already been graded. (Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Shovana Narayan)

The Ministry of Culture has come up with an absurd policy of grading artists and writers for the purpose of sponsoring them to various events. The ministry justified this move by saying that it would break the clique dominating the cultural space in the country.

So far the Ministry has already graded 185 artists into three categories namely outstanding (O), promising (P) and waiting (W) for representing the country at festivals abroad. Minister of State for Culture Mahesh Sharma told The Indian Express that the idea is to create a comprehensive profile of all personalities in the field of culture – a definitive cultural directory and rank them as per their “popularity, age and experience”.