We place important documents in an archive pertaining to different facets of our activities at social, cultural and governmental levels and archives are holders of and provide us opportunities to access them. It hardly needs to be emphasised as to how much critical a role such records are supposed to play in binding people and their cultures together and help us in knowing eloquently about institutions and individuals. Having said so, it also cannot be lost sight of that not only are critical, important and vital records at times, under ordinary course difficult to be accessed due to host of reasons chiefly how much properly placed, methodically filed or not , preserved and maintained or not etc but certain records and documents get damaged and even lost. To overcome most of such problems, digitization is the only way out to save, preserve, maintain and easily access such documents and records. Historic Mubarak Mandi is having on it priceless archival records related to cultural, historic, literary and other fields of much importance as also connected to other social and even emotional feelings. It is, therefore, a natural corollary that for the process of digitization, funds and other infrastructure are needed. It is not that the process of digitization of archival records was not started right when digitization or converting hard copies of whatever nature into digital format had started assuming its importance as it was done nearly more than 10 years back. It pertains to the period when the then State Government had released Rs.5 crore for the purpose. The process, however, suffered jolts as on the one hand, the amount of Rs.5 crore was found to be quite insufficient and on the other, dispute between the agency engaged for the job and the authorities of the Department of Archives, Archaeology and Museums over release of payments complicated the issue further. This all resulted in the much hyped activities of digitization coming to abrupt halt in the year 2011-12. Thereafter, not a penny has been released for digitization process by any successive (State) Governments. While on the one hand , the intervention of the High Court taking serious note of the official indifference and apathy asked the concerned authorities to clear the stand on this historic complex within a month so that the entire archival record could be preserved, on the other hand, part of the archival records housed at Mubarak Mandi Complex and part of it shifted to Kala Kendra, Jammu made mess of the things as the entire archival records cannot be accommodated into two halls set apart at Kala Kendra . Before lodging the part of such records, the building should have been made such or modifications made in the halls which could be termed archive friendly. It is not that some work on the project was not done as nearly 34 lakh pages of the archives were digitized and only 12 lakh remain to be digitized. High Court had given further directions but the matter could not proceed further until on February 4 this year wherein it was observed that either the work on it was going on with very slow progress or there was no progress at all. The resolution of the issue is only in working in close co-operation by all the concerned authorities and it is quite satisfactory to note that the court has given one month to respondents in the case in deciding who would do the ”job”, the timeframe within which it would be completed and the estimated cost of completing the left over work worked out. It remains, therefore, to be seen how the concerned authorities feel serious about the matter and comply with the court directions. The Government, in the meantime, is required to take stock of the Archives Department and make it truly functional so that some serious efforts were made towards digitization process so that the rich heritage of Jammu and Kashmir could be preserved.
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