NEW DELHI: India will soon have the first official documentation of its war history which will be among important books that will be freely available online as government aims to increasingly utilise the reach of the digital medium.
I&B minister Arun Jaitley, who was speaking at the launch of reference book India-2015 today, said he had suggested to Publication Division, which comes under his ministry, and also other departments that "we must now strengthen digital medium much more so that the people can read these books on the net."
"I suggested with the Defence Ministry and am told that they are also moving fast on India's War history. We are one of the few countries which do not have a formal documentation of our war history," he said.
Jaitley, who earlier also held the charge of the Defence Ministry, said that he had only last year realised while doing some research that the largest participation in the First World War was of Indians with 12 lakh people.
It was then, Jaitley said, that he felt that India should have a formal war history.
Jaitley said that the collected works of Mahatama Gandhi is one of the big publications of the Publication Department and there is no reason why it should not be available to everyone on the Digital medium itself.
He suggested that the reach of the digital medium should be utilised to make other important books accessible to readers.
"Now that mediums are available and they are very low cost mediums.... And there is no reason why these mediums should not be utilised and what material we have should be available should be available to the world at large," Jaitley said.
Speaking about India-2015, Jaitley said the publication of the book for 59th year running by Publication Division is a great tradition. For anyone who wants to know the country, there cannot be a better document than this, Jaitley said.
The cover page of the reference book, India-2015 carries different pictures including that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing people at the Independence Day, pictures related to India's achievements in space and a logo of the 'Swachh Bharat' campaign.
Earlier, speaking at the event I&B secretary Bimal Julka had said that an e-version of the reference book India-2015, which contains authentic data about the country, would also soon be brought out.
Speaking about the present edition of the publication which was released today in both hindi and english, Julka said it also carries a chapter on all important flagship schemes of the present government like 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao', 'Make in India' and 'Jandhan Yojana'.
Julka also added that the I&B ministry is now looking at creating a pool of translators so that in the coming years it is also possible to bring out the reference book in regional languages also.
Highlighting the popularity of the book, Julka said the print order of the book had risen from 30,000 earlier to nearly one and half lakh now.