Amazing what some people consider a defense! Yes, the National Museum isn't in sparkling condition. But it is this govt that has left it to die. The stellar director-general Venu Vasudevan, whose initiatives had changed the museum experience b/w 2013 & 2015, was removed mid-term. 
Under Venu, the NM had started free volunteer-led walking tours, and held some brilliant exhibitions in collaboration with the finest Indian art historians and curators, occ also working with private collectors. Shows on the arts of the Deccan, on Parsi history and heritage, etc.
There was much more to be done. Instead, after Venu's unceremonious and deeply protested removal in early 2015 (indianexpress.com/article/cities…), standards fell further. And since 2017, large sections of the bldg have been 'under renovation'.
When I visited it last, on the first Sunday after it reopened after last year's lockdown, most galleries were closed & the lights were off in others. But I'm a museum girl, so persisted. :) Wrote this account of my day at NM & NGMA for India Today magazine trishagupta.blogspot.com/2020/11/a-day-…
My India Today piece (link in previous tweet) was intended as a light and breezy experiential account of how Delhi's big museum(s) felt post-pandemic. Meant to inspire people to visit. Still, I couldn't but note the closures & cordons that kept visitors from most of the display.
Also, anyone who's ever asked an Indian art historian will know that what is (even ostensibly) on display is a small fraction of its collection. Much else is stored in its vaults, and MUCH MORE attention is needed, both to conditions of storage & the rotation of items displayed.
But is the tragic lack of informed, educated, dynamic leadership at the museum's helm, and the terrible neglect & stultifying bureaucratic stranglehold most museums in India suffer, a reason to demolish the grand old building designed by Ganesh B Deolalikar, inaugurated in 1960?
On the qn of NM needing more space than the current bldg can provide: the original plans show 3 intended phases. Maybe time/budget reasons in what was then a poor country? But after that initial moment under Nehru, we never gave museums priority. 2nd phase was completed in 1989.
Oh, and it appears a fdn stone for 3rd & final phase of construction - possibly a qtr of the original plan - was laid in Dec 2017. When I visited in Nov 2020, guards claimed 'renovation' was on during lockdown, and I saw some signs of recent constt/demolition behind the main bldg
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