Journalism of Courage
On May 23, all stakeholders in the Taj Mahal, including the ASI, the state’s tourism and wildlife departments and environmental petitioner M C Mehta, met in Delhi for a review of the steps being taken to protect the Taj. An ASI official privy to the meeting says, “This should have been done much more often. Things wouldn’t have come to such a pass.”
In 1998, the Ministry of Environment and Forests notified the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ) project, headed by the Agra Commissioner, to “monitor the progress of the implementation of various schemes for protection of the Taj Mahal”. The members were supposed to sit together every two months to discuss the steps taken to preserve the Taj. But until the May meeting, TTZ meetings have been few and far between.
The TTZ, with a defined area of 10,400 sq km, comprises the districts of Agra, Firozabad, Mathura, Hathras and Etah in Uttar Pradesh, and also Bharatpur in Rajasthan, and over 40 protected monuments, including three World Heritage sites — the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri. At the heart of the project is the need for a multi-agency coordination to arrest any possible decay to the Taj. Standing on the northern flank of the Taj, where the wind brings a strong stench from the sluggish river, it’s evident that this ‘coordination’ hasn’t worked on the ground.
“The ASI’s mandate is within the four walls of the monument and the agency has done all that it could. The rest of the agencies could have done more to control air and water pollution,” says Bhuvan Vikram, Superintending Archaeologist of the ASI’s Agra Circle. “If something is not happening, it means someone is not working. If nothing is happening inside Taj Mahal, then I am responsible. I don’t want to enter into others jurisdiction, and I don’t allow anyone to enter my jurisdiction. Maybe there are constraints since most of the agencies are state agencies,” he adds.
The ASI maintains that the present state at the Taj is also owing to the conflict of interest of various stakeholders. “The ASI wants to maintain the Taj but the hospitality and tourism industry around wants more people to visit the Taj,” says an ASI official in Delhi, adding, “It’s the responsibility of the state government to keep the area clean. They have failed miserably.”
Experts, however, believe the ASI has spread itself too thin, handling both conservation and management of the Taj with inadequate manpower.
“The Taj needs to have a site manager, who can be the point person, when coordination needs to take place between the commissioner or the forest department official,” says Amita Baig, who has advised government expert committees on the monument. In the early 2000s, as part of the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative, Baig and her colleagues recommended a site management plan for the Taj Mahal.
Heritage expert Annabel Lopez, also part of the core team of the Collaborative, was responsible for ‘visitor management’ that was proposed as part of the site management plan. The focus she says, “was to open up additional spaces within the Taj complex, so that visitors would be dispersed over the whole site rather than concentrated only around the main mausoleum.”
“Interpretation centers were proposed on either side of the main entrance before entering the complex. Museums were proposed… Right now, there is nothing else to do in the Taj so everyone rushes to the mausoleum, and for want of nothing else to do, they hang out there. There is very little appreciation now on what you are seeing.”
So, are international experts the solution, as the Supreme Court had recommended? “If need be, we can call international experts. But we do consult IIT-Madras and NEERI from time to time. In fact, the ASI is helping in conservation work outside India,” says Vikram.
