"Capitalism, or the ideology of the unbridled pursuit of wealth, is destroying culture on an unbridled scale... countless cultural activities, seen to be non-lucrative or less lucrative, are being abandoned all over the country. Others are being severely compromised in order to keep or make them lucrative: compromise in materials or techniques used, shoddiness in workmanship or performance, short-cut methods, etc. These are resulting in loss of natural spontaneity, cultural authenticity, technological expertise and performance satisfaction, which, in turn, gradually leads to the degeneration and further abandonment of cultural activities. All this is affecting various fields of culture: musical forms and styles, musical instruments, dance forms, architectural styles, art forms, handicrafts, traditional crops, culinary items, etc... owever, the concept of Money as God has now changed all this. For perhaps the first time in India’s long history, there is now no real official support for Indian culture. In the last decade or so, apparently coinciding with the advocacy and adoption of new policies of economic ‘reforms’, it is now passé for governments to do anything concrete to protect, preserve, record or perpetuate India’s traditional culture, or even to aid and encourage individuals or organizations doing so. Institutions established in the post-Independence era are being literally starved for funds, or funds are being used for any purpose but to achieve the original aims and objectives, or, simply, the very aims and objectives of these institutions are being changed. In any case no new activities, except occasional pedestrian ‘cultural’ projects of a political nature, are being undertaken: the institutions are being slowly transformed from cultural to commercial institutions, in line with the ‘changing times’. “Infinitely worse is what is happening to the detailed records of the research, documentation and collection undertaken by these institutions, in the not so distant past, to preserve, popularize and perpetuate different aspects of Indian culture. These archival records ¾ print, tape, film or actual physical objects ¾ are suddenly becoming an eyesore or an embarrassment, or simply a financial burden, to a cash-conscious leadership with a ‘reformist’ eye on the ‘globe’. A standard sequence now is as follows: state-funded museums, libraries and archives ¾ or at least the records in them ¾ slowly become rare or inaccessible, in different ways, to the (lay or scholarly) public eye. Often ‘constraints of space’ force the authorities to remove these records from their protected environments and dump them in ill-maintained godowns, to rot and decay, unseen and forgotten. And, occasionally, mysterious fires break out in the places which house these archives, destroying invaluable and irreplaceable records (including those pertaining to the golden age of Indian movies), then to be forgotten forever. All these events, coincidentally, make available valuable land and funds for more lucrative commercial purposes. The persons in authority are too busy saving or making money - for themselves, or, if they are to be believed, for the public coffers - to care."