While data available on the Internet has made the lives of several students and professionals easier with information about everything under the sun available within seconds, not much can be said about the credibility of content that is available online.u00a0But the launch of Theosianama.com might prove to be a boon for those researching on Indian Modern and Contemporary Fine Arts and Hindi cinema. A project by auction house Osian’s includes an online search engine that aims to be an authentic educational content provider and is set to launch in its beta version in March this year.

What’s new?
Speaking about the idea behind a free search portal, Neville Tuli, Founder and Chairman, Osian’s Connoisseurs of Arts says, “India cannot tackle her developmental problems through education unless there is a radical change in the access to top quality knowledge across all spectrum of our public. In the excuse of how can the poor or the illiterate learn or appreciate from the great arts and culture, we have strangled access and pandered to the lowest common denominator.” Tuli maintains that changing this, at least, for the area of the arts, cinema, culture and linked humanities is something Osian’s aspires to do. “It is twenty years of systematic unerring focus on archiving, documentation and research. Once this is available, how we utilise the knowledge will become the focus, but at least, the politics of access will get destroyed overnight. Whether you are in Ghatkopar dancing to Dabanng or theorising Derrida in Oxford, you now have common access to the very best knowledge base on the subjects, in both image and text forms,” he reasons.