Aimed at sensitising the society, especially the youth, about Gandhian values, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur has joined hands with the National Council of Science Museums to develop a one stop portal – Gandhipediahe portal will be a repository of the books, speeches and letters of Mahatma Gandhiji.
Gandhipedia is being developed as part of the 150th birth centenary of the father of the nation. The Indian Institute of technology, Gandhinagar, is also part of the project.
The project, which has four phases, is being done through Artificial Intelligence. In the first phase, more than 40 books of Gandhiji will be digitalised and indexed. Animesh Mukherjee from IIT, Kharagpur, who is leading a team, was quoted as saying that the books would be used for reconstructing the social network of Gandhiji. Gandhiji’s autobiography “ The Story of My Experiments with Truth” will be the first book to be used for reconstructing the social network.
The first phase of the project is expected to be completed by March 2020. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has already announced in her 2019-2020 budget speech about Gandhipedia, which would be brought out as part of the 150th birth anniversary celebrations.
Once completed, Gandhipedia will be a comprehensive portal for knowing about Gandhiji’s life, social life, literature and other contributions.
In the other phases, there are plans to digitalise works and life of other freedom fighters such as Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, Bal Gangadhar tilak, Lal Bahadur Shastri, lala Lajpat Rai, Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekar Azad.