The Salar Jung Museum (SJM) has a staff shortage of 23.5%, it has not acquired a new object after 1992, and it has not upgraded its CCTV cameras due to budgetary constraints; these were some of the conclusions of the Comptroller & Auditor General’s performance audit of one the prime museums in the country. The 2021 report tabled recently spotlights how the SJM has been affected leading to less than happy experience for visitors.
The SJM in Hyderabad is a unique museum that houses the collection acquired by one man — Salar Jung-III, who was the prime minister in the erstwhile Nizam’s Dominion for a brief period.
Plan to improve
While the CAG report highlights the failings of the museum, in its Action Taken Report on Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry of Culture has rolled out a plan to improve the functioning of the museum.
Among the plan is higher ticket prices for special groups and timing. “Efforts will be made for voluntary donations and providing special tours for a group before and after public hours by charging higher on entry tickets,” says the ministry. The museum has renovated 24 galleries out of 38 and plans to complete the rest of 14 galleries in the next 4 years.
“We were to open the Islamic Art and Culture in India Gallery to showcase art and valuable manuscripts, but the COVID pandemic interrupted our work. Getting workers to work continuously has become a problem after the pandemic waned,” says director of SJM A. Nagender Reddy. “The specialised museum should be ready by the end of this financial year,” he informed. The museum is yet to get back to the pre-pandemic days in footfalls as the weekend number remained at 3,000 per day as against 5,000 visitors before 2019.
SJM has 46,216 art objects, 8,191 manuscripts and 69,225 books. Out of 46,216 art objects, 16,606 were displayed and 29,610 (64%) were kept in reserve. While the CAG report commented on the rotation policy for art objects, a museum staffer said: “We have 33% objects on display. These are prime attractions. If we remove these attractions and bring some objects from reserve then it will be a disservice to the museum.”
But how the budgetary cuts have impacted the SJM can be seen from the CAG remarks. “SJM was unable to upgrade its existing CCTV cameras as recommended by its security agency i.e. Central Industrial Security Force due to budget constraints. Further, in the absence of policy or guidelines, expenditure of SJM on preservation and conservation activities (including up-gradation of security system and digitisation) ranged between 0.09 and 5.83% of its total expenditure (annual average budgeted expenditure of ₹24.33 crore).”
