Union Budget 2026: National Destination Digital Knowledge Grid to be set up

The Union Budget-2026-2027 presented on Sunday (February 1, 2026) rolled out a rough roadmap for meshing the thriving digital ecosystem with heritage, history and spiritual culture of India. 

The Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, announced the creation of a “National Destination Digital Knowledge Grid to document all places of significance — cultural, spiritual, and heritage sites. This new initiative will create an ecosystem of jobs for local researchers, historians, content creators, and technology partners.”

“One of the drawbacks is that a lot of monuments and archaeological sites in India don’t have drawings. The National Monuments Authority was supposed to do that but it is still an unfinished project. Perhaps they will do 3-D laser scans which is inexpensive to do,” said a conservation architect welcoming the project with a caveat.

“I think an intense mapping exercise like this would be very helpful in the long run, creating repositories and digital twins, but I wish that even for the documentation, local stakeholders and organisations are involved,” said architect Sibghat Khan of Deccan Archives, who recently created a 3D model of the Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad for Telangana government’s adopt-a-monument scheme.

A scaled model of the OGH in Hyderabad
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By Arrangement

Among the highlights of the proposed budget, the Finance Minister announced an ambitious pilot scheme to “upskill 10,000 guides at 20 iconic tourist sites through standardised, high-quality 12-week training course in hybrid mode in collaboration with an Indian Institute of Management.”

​​Currently, the quality of guides in most heritage sites leaves a lot to be desired, with fanciful tales dominating the walkthrough conversations, at a time when visitors have authentic information available at their fingertips.

The Finance Minister also proposed to *develop of 15 archeological sites like Dholavira, Rakhigarhi, Adichanallur, Sarnath, Hastinapur, and Leh Palace for tourists. “Excavated landscapes will be opened to the public through curated walkways. Immersive storytelling skills and technologies will be introduced to help conservation labs, interpretation centres, and guides,” said Ms. Sitharaman in her budget speech.