INTACH,broken?

INTACH — the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage — has recently seen something of a succession battle,in which incumbent president S.K. Mishra was replaced by Major General L.K. Gupta. Normally,the bitter internecine warfare raging behind the scenes of even the most publicly po-faced NGO is not worth noticing,hardly relevant to anyone’s life. But INTACH is far from your average NGO. Indeed,the problem is precisely that: it appears that it has become a victim of its own success,growing so fast in the conservation space it chose to occupy that it is now seen as the only reliable conduit of government money — increasingly,therefore,a quasi-governmental agency.

This was formalised,practically,in a bill passed by the Lok Sabha a fortnight ago: the Ancient Monuments Bill 2010,which controls construction within 200 metres of protected areas. The only agency allowed to sanction construction? Till recently,the Archaeological Survey of India. The new bill,however,fuzzes the distinction between the government-run ASI and the privately-held INTACH. (In various clauses,responsibility is assigned to “ASI/ INTACH”.) Along with an increasing amount of responsibility,monies — including government grants — have begun to flow through the NGO in the hundreds of crores.

INTACH has grown both through its reputation for professionalism as well as being comfortably embedded in the Delhi power-culture circuit,particularly that associated with the Congress party. Both have created the situation we are now in: in which a state,unsurprisingly convinced that it cannot fix every heritage site itself,turns to the private/ NGO sector for professional help; but there is also,apparently,only one private alternative. Capturing that “private” but quasi-governmental,monopolistic alternative will now become,therefore,a primary aim for politicians and retired bureaucrats. Our cultural administration will turn into our cricket administration,a cosy network of the politically connected and the commercially interested. What is needed is to ensure no monopoly builds up; otherwise the government’s attempts to ensure professional conservation and INTACH’s efforts to stay non-sarkari are both doomed. And we’ll hear a lot more about power struggles within a quasi-governmental organisation.