Monday, December 23, 2013

The Aurangabad Centre of the Indian Institute of Architects recently hosted a Maharashtra Level Convention. The Theme of the Convention was Heritage & Tourism. As I was practicing there for about 30 years, I can appreciate the frustration people who live there would feel about the status of affairs. We had a similar conference about 15 years ago, which was attended by most of the decision makers and policymakers in the town, yet nothing has actually happened in all these years. It sometimes feels as if we are fighting for a lost cause.

To the outsider, Aurangabad is the city of Ajanta & Ellora, a tourist city. It evokes many images simultaneously. Though the capital town of a backward region, it boasts of four official industrial estates, has an international airport, presumably for the tourists, but sustained mostly by the local industrialists, who have a stake in the development of Aurangabad, and would like to promote Aurangabad as a destination for many more ventures. Aurangabad was in national & international news in 2010 when a group of Industrialists and their friends bought 150 Mercedes Benz cars, the single largest order in the history of the company.  In August 2013, the Times of India reported that now the cars have largely gone missing from the roads, parked as they are in the safety of their owners' garages. Fearing damage and dents to their dream drives, the owners said they cannot risk them on Aurangabad's potholed roads.

Aurangabad was once famous as the fastest growing city in Asia. This is an interesting but highly misinterpreted fact. The rate of growth was high because the original city was very small - the absolute growth of the Aurangabad can not be compared to a larger city like Delhi or Mumbai. The high rate of industrial growth is matched now by the highest number of sick units in Maharashtra and there is a largescale shift of converting the Chikhalthana Industrial area into a residential neighbourhood. By a happy coincidence, this area is adjecent to N-1, the highest priced residential locality in CIDCO. It makes a lot of practical sense now that the owners of the industrial land would like to take advantage of the enhanced property rates, instead of manufacturing goods and waiting for returns in a highly unpredictable global economy.

The city used to be quite clean, but has relented now. It seems that people who used to keep it clean have now got tired of clearing the mess, and nobody else cares. To add to the mess we repair the main spine of the city, Jalna road, perpetually. This is our local past-time. Added to this the Jalna Road has multiple flyovers only to make the city look good to the visitors who would expect flyovers in a large city, and we do not wish to disppoint them. Of these the Kranti Chowk flyover has already become a tourist attraction, for its unique design. Every time I pass along this junction, I keep wondering whether any other solution to this flyover would have created such a spectacular design.

History

The city has been part of a politically important region for more than 2000 years. Paithan (Pratishthan) was the capital of Satavahanas, and there was a succession of various other regimes who had their major settlements here including Rashtrakutas & Yadavas, Mughals, Nizamshahi from Ahmednagar, Adilshahi  from Bijapur & lastly the Nijamshahi regime from Hyderabad. It is thus that the city and its surrounding area has a large number of historical monuments dating from 400 BC to the 1950s. Of these Ellora & Ajanta caves are now given the status of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, but there are many more which would also qualify for that status if we make a concerted effort to document them.

The city of Aurangabad is the brainchild of Malik Amber who established it in 1610, on the site of a village called Khadki. Apart from the many buildings & gates that Malik Ambar created here, he also developed a system of pipelines for water supply to the entire city. The pipes were made out of burnt clay & the system worked on the principle of siphon. The pipeline originated in the hills, and carried all the water by gravity alone. Called Nahre-Ambari, the system worked well till 1960 i.e. for about 350 years. By this token alone, it is a feat of engineering. Even today, the systems works in some places, though a lot of it has been fallen in ruins. The INTACH Centre of Aurangabad has been after the authorities to declare it as a national monument, and the effort may succed in the long run.

Issues for Conservation - Monuments

Of the well-known heritage buildings and places which are already listed as monuments, the problems are related to management. The restoration work is funded by ASI and recently the Japanese government too granted a few hundred crores for restoration of Ajintha & Ellora. So as far as restoration of the major monuments is concerned, funding is not a problem, nor there is any problem of expertise, though restoration by ASI lacks the sensitive approach these monuments deserve. But that is a subject for a different paper altogether.

The problems of management of all these monuments lies in the mindset of the ASI and all the official agencies which are controlling various aspects of maintainance of these places. They have borrowed the British mindset of treating the local population as an undesirable element, that needs to be kept away to conserve the purity of these places, and the conservation effort is primarily directed to the unnamed foreign visitors.

It is therefore no wonder that the entire sets of private service providers at these locations - the food vendors and vendors selling all kinds of tourist guides and similar items, shops selling all kinds of crafts and so on operate almost as if they are the encroachers on the place - in made up shanties which disfigure the place instead of being seen as providers of a much needed logistics support to the tourists.

This is in spite of the fact that the none of the governmental agencies that operate in these places are providing any of these services. They only wake up to the task when a VIP or a VVIP decides to visit these places, and create an efficient display of management for a short duration. For the rest of the year the tourists are left to fend for themselves.

We keep on harping the importance of the Tourist Industry, but fail to address the basic issues in tourist management. It is not enough just to keep the monuments intact and the area clean, the issue is of the total experience the tourist has, right from the time of his/her landing in India till the time he/she goes back.

This includes his/her interaction with the Taxi-drivers and Hotel operators, the quality of service at the Hotel, the transport facility to the monuments and the quality of roads, the sanitation & food facilities at the sightseeing places and the interaction with all the governmental & non-governemental organisations during the entire period of stay. Our record on all these fronts is so absymal that most of the foreign tourists go back with a vow never to return. Not only that, in the virtually connected world of today, their experiences are shared with the world, and there are only a few who would be willing to risk an unpleasant confrontation with all the obstacles just to have a glimpse of the World Heritage Places that we possess.

It is not a matter of how much money we have – lack of budget is a normal excuse for the shabby state of affairs you get in almost all seminars on tourism. So many organisations - particularly the Governmental ones like ITDC & MTDC - keep on citing lack of money as the major problem confronting development of tourism. This is not to true. Tourists do not mind poverty, but what they can not tolerate are the unhygenic surroundings & apathy of the service providers. This is true not only of Aurangabad, but almost all places of tourist attraction in India.

Domestic Tourists are willing to tolerate a bit of dirt but not the apathy. They are in fact served better by informal service providers at all these locations – a contribution not accepted by the officialdom. Unless we include all the private players in giving a comprehensive package to the tourist, the sitution can only worsen.

If we really intend to improve on this score, we need to accept certain basic facts. Government & its agencies ASI, ITDC, MTDC et al) are best when it comes to administrative & security matters, but rank worst in providing any kind of service. I am not saying that all the private operators are good, but the Government agencies can act as monitors & controllers, deciding the norms for the private sector service - providers and enforcing these norms through disciplinary actions, instead of trying to provide these services themselves.

To do this, we need to accept the other fact that the private service providers are an integral part of the tourist industry, and must be supported by the government & its agencies. All over the world, private service providers are respected and given prime importance in all matters of tourist management. No self-respecting person or organisation in private sector will be willing to work with the Government agencies without such acceptance at the Government level.

We do have plenty of spaces under the control of ASI or the Government agencies which lie unutilised today near most of these monuments, where ancillary tourist facilities can be planned with public-private participation, which can give infra-structural support to all service providers. This support will not only enhance the image of the place, it will be make the private operators partners in the enterprise and make it possible for them to cater to all levels/classes of tourists, and generate more revenue.

Alongwith this, we also need to institutionalise all service providers and give them recognition. A tourist - be it domestic or foreign, is more willing to accept the official classification for a service provider - be it a taxi-service or hotel booking. People are wary of getting cheated and would prefer some kind of official stamp on the service operator. We have been doing this to some extent, but have not constituted sufficient controls to see that the operators indeed deliver the goods and are answerable. This may look quite simple on the face of it, but is actually a tall order. Just to quote one pointer – the Municipal Corporation of Aurangabad has a large establishment for keeping the city clean- but is unable to enforce cleanliness at any point of time in the past few years. Managing cleanliness on a day-to-day basis is a hugh task, and needs a dedicated management. Same is the case of almost all the items listed above. Taxi-drivers do not suddenly start being civil to visitors just because of one advertisement featuring Amir Khan, a city needs to inculcate a culture of respecting visitors. Aurangabad was once known for its ‘tameej’ and ‘najakat’, influenced by the Lucknow Navabi mannerisms and courtsey, a feature we need to bring back as an integral component of experience of the city for the tourist.


Conservation issues of unlisted heritage

In Aurangabad a wide variety of buildings and places exist that have heritage value, but majority of these structures not in the list of either the Central or State ASI, and thus have no legal protection. A legal protection may not help conservation directly, but it paves the way for systematic conservation effort. There is an urgent need for us to intervene since it is this heritage that we are rapidly losing.

In Aurangabad, for example, we had 52 historical gates, marking entry to the original walled city, out of which only 21 remain, and only 3 of them are now on the heritage protection list of the state archeology. Many of these are deteriorating day by day. Unfortunately this has not received the attention it deserves in terms of its historical importance. If the situation continues, there is an imminent danger of loss of the distinct character and identity which these buildings and precincts have given to the City of Aurangabad.

A major task is to create awareness amongst the local population about the heritage value (and possibly a commercial value through enhanced tourism if properly preserved!) which alone can gurantee the survival of all this heritage places. A case in point is the destruction of almost the entire fort wall around the old city, the stones from which were used by the local residents to build their own houses. The free raw material may have served a short term objective, but has destroyed the heritage permanently.

Conclusion
We have conserved the Monuments we have listed already, but have forgotten to support them with the kind of logistics support that make Heritage Tourism viable. The situation can be improved by incorporating private service providers as equal partners with the Government agencies, giving them recognition & respect, while simultaneously instituting a check on reliability and accountability.
A concerted effort is needed to bring the so far unexplored monuments & precincts on the list of heritage places. To do this we need public-private partnership, but we also need support of local population and their involvement in the conservtion effort.


Finally, Heritage needs to be preserved for its own sake as an indicator our culture, and by inference defining our own identity as a people. This is not a baggage you can afford to drop on the way to development - it makes your journey through life more meaningful and enjoyable. That it can also help generate some revenue through its management for the tourist should be seen as an incidental benefit of keeping your own house in order.

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