The Hindu : National : `Corporate sponsorship welcome for science museums'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 30, 2004

National

National

`Corporate sponsorship welcome for science museums'

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, JUNE 29. Corporate sponsorship will be welcomed by science museums, I.K. Mukherjee, Director-General of National Council of Science Museums, said here today.

Talking to reporters before the opening of an electronics gallery sponsored by the Bharat Electronics Ltd. at the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, he said this was a first for the network of 28 science museums in the country. "There are other ongoing projects in which we are associated with Government agencies and public sector units. An agricultural science museum supported by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which cost Rs. 5 crores, is coming up in Delhi. Oil India and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation are involved in other museums. We have collaborated with Samsung for two museums in Delhi and Mumbai."

Science museums received a Government funding of around Rs. 26 crores annually and raised Rs. 12 crores from their own resources. This was apart from what corporate associates would spend; ONGC was spending Rs. 20 crores on one of them. "Apart from the major science museums such as the one in Bangalore, we have a number of regional and sub-regional centres and even mobile exhibitions which go to even rural and tribal areas. All of them cannot be self-supporting; if suitable sponsorship comes up, it will benefit us. After all, we are taking science education forward in an informal way,'' he said.

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