Kolkata, Nov 16 (IANS) To promote and strengthen bilateral ties, Germany’s cultural arm Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan plans to organise a year-long festival at 15 locations across India in 2011.
“The idea is to bring together a comprehensive and authentic picture of Germany in India enhancing the cultural relation between both the nations,” Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan’s regional director (South Asia) Stefan Dreyer told reporters in an interactive session here Monday.

He said the festival would look at exploring the academic, economic, cultural, political and scientific ties between the two countries with a likely corpus of eight million euro.

“It will be a collaborative effort by the Goethe-Institut, German foreign office and Germany-based corporate entities,” Dreyer said.

Goethe-Institut and the German foreign office have already committed about four million euro for the project and now they are looking at similar amount of contribution from the German private sector investors.

Celebrating its 50-year-long association with India, the Goethe Institut has also launched a “culture and development” project with an aim to facilitate the functioning of existing institutions across the country.

“We want to help develop infrastructure as well as technical and teaching skills at various institutions across India. The financial allocations will be on a per-case basis,” Goethe Institut president Klaus-Dieter Lehmann said.

He said that Max Mueller Bhavan was also launching a special grant programme, totalling Rs.60 lakh, to support the development of various cultural projects in India.

The event is expected to commence in September 2011.