How India can save its urban heritage
Conservation of urban heritage has come a long way, though there is still some to go
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Prefer us on GoogleLast Updated: Aug 17, 2019, 08:43 IST9 min
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The infrastructure for conservation is today more well-rounded, with organisations such as the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach) and International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos) having stepped up with their know-how.As one of its functions, Icomos, in its role as advisor to Unesco, conducts studies and lists recommendations for World Heritage sites. India has 38 such sites (cultural, natural and mixed), the latest being the city of Jaipur, which was added this June. Rohit Jigyasu, vice president of Icomos-India, believes there is a need to look beyond the colonial legacy and the preservation of more than just a few monuments.
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“Our conservation guidelines and principles are based on the West’s, but the heritage in our part of the world is very different. It’s not a relic from the past rather, it’s living heritage. There is a lot of thought around this by academics and practitioners, but it has not been put into practice through legislation and government intervention,” he says.
In France, for instance, the government supports heritage precincts by offering subsidies to private owners for maintaining their property renovation work is carried out as per the character of the area. “In a developing country, a lot of resources are assigned to the basic needs of people, so heritage conservation becomes secondary,” says Jigyasu. “Besides, when you spend so much money on, say, the Taj Mahal and then build a boundary wall and separate it from the local context, people are not really going to understand the heritage movement.”On-ground challenges are aplenty, starting with funding, given that India has numerous heritage structures across the country. For state-owned structures, restoration is at times funded by municipal bodies or money that comes via corporate social responsibility funds the latter, mostly, going to projects that draw eyeballs. “The concept of urban heritage conservation started in 1967, when the UK enacted the Civic Amenities Act, but we’ve made rapid progress in the last 15 to 20 years and are at par with global efforts. But there remains a gap between policy and implementation,” says Tipnis. “But whenever there is going to be a battle between real estate development and conservation, you know the former will win.”
Conservation becomes a testing process in the case of private properties, where landlords continue to collect measly rents. For instance, buildings that fall under the Maharashtra Rent Control Act, 1999. This has resulted in tenants paying a pittance, while refusing to vacate the property, which makes it hard to maintain them. Modifications first require permissions from the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee.
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“On one hand, it’s called the city’s heritage while at the same time they don’t have any funds to maintain it. So, the public asset now becomes a private liability,” says Harshad Bhatia, an urban designer. “Our guidelines have been framed with a sepia-tinted, picture postcard view of what it was back in the day. You have to look at it from the living heritage point of view and the growing needs of the population.”
Beyond buildings
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A larger approach to conservation applies to neighbourhoods, and goes beyond the restoration of individual monuments or edifices. The idea is to give residents of these areas an identity and relevance. “Only those with the financial means would be open to having their property declared as heritage. The rest consider it to be a stigma, since it stalls their development. So the movement really is going one step forward and two step backwards,” says Bhatia.
One of the key projects that urban conservationist Kamalika Bose has worked on is the Chinatown quarter of Kolkata. At first, the locals couldn’t understand the interest that she and her team had in their area. “They lacked an identity, since they had been marginalised in all sorts of ways over the years. So we first had to get the community on board and get them to take pride in their neighbourhood,” she says.
Bose first produced a book that documented the heritage of the area and handed it out to each household to mobilise the community. Two years later, they transformed a common space into a Cantonese restaurant. Over time, even tourists to the area started to have a more meaningful experience.
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“Gradually they started thinking that maybe there was something to look into after all. It’s had a ripple effect today, where smaller initiatives like pop-ups and festivals are being celebrated with a wider audience. Only when they feel a sense of belonging as equal citizens of Kolkata, will they make efforts towards saving their heritage,” Bose says. “Conservation needs a holistic approach that goes beyond restoring a few buildings.”
First Published: Aug 17, 2019, 08:43
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