By IANS,
New Delhi : The Indian Centre for Cultural Relations (ICCR) took India’s soft power a step ahead by launching a new web portal listing the centre’s activities both in the country and abroad.
The portal was inaugurated by ICCR president Karan Singh at Azad Bhavan in the capital Friday.
The ICCR helps formulate and implement policies pertaining to the country’s external cultural relations and fosters multi-lateral understanding through creative dialogues and people-to-people cultural contact.
The website www.iccrindia.net collates ICCR activities and presents these in a unified manner.
“The site is easy to read, easy to navigate and is comfortably viewed. For every page, the target audience has been kept in mind whether it is an artiste, a student, an Indian visitor or a foreign one,” a spokesperson for ICCR said.
ICCR’s programmes include hosting foreign cultural festivals in India, organising Indian festivals abroad, sending and receiving cultural troupes, hosting or holding exhibitions and conferences and seminars both in India and abroad, inviting distinguished world personalities to India, sponsoring visits of Indian scholars and artistes abroad and providing a platform for upcoming artistes to showcase their talent.
The elegantly coloured website designed in purple, orange and black has a section devoted to visuals of legendary classical musicians. It provides users with the history of the site, centres across the world, library facilities, support and centres across the world.
The site also posts a schedule of cultural programmes at Azad Bhavan – the centre’s official cultural space – and details about the centre’s numerous publications.
The ICCR was founded by India’s first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in 1950.
The council has set up overseas centres in Bangkok, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Abu Dhabi and Dhaka. The other centres in the pipeline are Thimpu, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Dar-es-Salaam, Budapest, Yangon, Paris, Washington, Hanoi, Lagos, Prague, Singapore, Rome and Kuwait.