http://www.e-ternals.com/english/infobase/infobase05col2.html
------------

Unfortunately, much of India's staggering heritage is in serious physical danger. For instance, one of the main forms of Indian heritage tradition is the palm-leaf book. Much of India's written heritage has been passed on in the form of specially treated palm leaves, with writing in ink or engraving. According to a conservative estimate by the Oriental Department of the German National Library (Berlin), there is a minimum of 1 million such palm-leaf books, most of them unpublished. If we add all the other Indian materials (printed books, paper manuscripts, inscriptions, birch-bark texts, etc.), the Indian share of the world's written heritage as of today comes up to roughly 20% in terms of sheer quantity. It comes as
a shock that this awesome heritage is materially, physically falling apart at an absolutely alarming rate. Paper, palm leaves and birch bark are organic materials with a natural life span. German scientists have determined that most Indian palm-leaf books will naturally decay within the next 50 to 100 years. In about 150 years, there will be practically none left whatsoever.

This is a rapid, gradual, unstoppable process. Every day, a part of it disappears forever. The process is accelerated by floods, fires, wars, inadvertent loss. Already an immense amount has been lost. For every Indian, in fact for every human being, this must be a truly shocking
discovery.

----------

Currently this work is being done by a German firm (which presumably now owns the digital copyright). This is absolutely critical workand needs to be done on a war footing in India. BTW, some of this is also being physically destroyed by Maoist rebels, for example in Nepal, who recently burned down one of the biggest manuscript archives/libraries there.