India has a Ministry of Education with budget this year of ₹1,39,286 crore, and a Ministry of Culture with ₹3,361 crore budget.

Between these two ministries, there is no conversation. One produces degrees and the other preserves monuments. Neither is asking the question that matters most in the AI era: What kind of human being are we producing, and does that human being know who they are?

This is why India needs a Ministry of EduCulture. A full ministry with a mandate, a budget, and a brief that treats culture as education to be lived, not merely heritage to be archived.

Look at what South Korea did. In 2008, after an economic crisis left the country on its knees, it created a Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism with one clear understanding: cultural identity is a strategic industry. For 2026, that ministry’s budget stands at 7.86 trillion won, an 11.2% increase, placing culture, sports and tourism among the most aggressively funded policy areas in the country. The S.Korean government has set a target to grow the K-culture industry to 300 trillion won by 2030. South Korea got BTS because a government decided, twenty-five years ago, that culture was worth serious investment.

India is sitting on a civilisational inheritance infinitely older and richer than K-pop. Its culture budget is a rounding error against its education budget and the result is visible everywhere. There is no need to dry the ink talking about what level of Education is being received by this huge taxpayer spent. But, the biggest worry is that we are producing educated people who have no felt relationship with the story tradition that shaped the civilisation they grew up in. Professionals fluent in frameworks imported from Stanford and McKinsey, unable to articulate why the conversation between Shri Krishn and Arjun remains the most sophisticated piece of leadership literature ever written. The question of who we are as a people, and what our stories are actually for, goes unasked in every classroom.

Solution? Imagine how nicely a Ministry of EduCulture would build the Ramlila as an event management and economic ecosystem, the way Bali built the Kecak. So, the vision of this ministry will be to integrate civilisational fluency into education, so a child finishing school in 2030 knows both how to use AI and what they are here for. These are questions I have been pondering over for a long time, long enough that a part of it even became a book, “Freedom! Let Us Begin the Journey…” an exploration of the inward path that runs beneath all outward skill.

Coming back to Government action, it is true that the NEP spoke of Indian knowledge systems, buts its been actioned merely like a policy paragraph, which is a good beginning at best. A ministry with a mandate and money is a different matter altogether. Tag someone in government who should read this. Or DM me if you are already working for hashtag#EduCulture