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Sunday, Apr 20, 2003

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MOST PEOPLE define heritage in terms of old buildings. In
the context of heritage regulations or heritage conservation, Features:
Life
this lay definition is (at once) much too exclusive and much
Magazine
too inclusive. Exclusive because heritage includes not
Literary Review
merely `physical' or `man-made heritage' but also `natural' Metro Plus
heritage such as sacred groves, water bodies or wooded Open Page
areas. Inclusive because not every old or architecturally Education
valuable building is a heritage building. Book Review
Business
Many such buildings enjoy separate protection as SciTech
monuments (for example, the Taj Mahal or the Tanjavur Entertainment
Brihadeeswara Temple that are protected by the Young World
Archaeological Survey of India). It is the remaining large Quest
body of buildings and sites that have architectural, historical Folio
or aesthetic value but do not receive statutory protection as
monuments that is the focus of heritage conservation.

Many Western nations have a comprehensive set of heritage

regulations. For instance, around five lakh buildings are
covered for such protection in Britain. Even the relatively
youthful United States has regulations that deal with historic
buildings in over 2,000 towns. Or consider tiny Latvia for
that matter — a country with a population of less than 2.5
million that has 8,325 protected heritage sites.

In contrast, the Indian record is dismal. About 5,000 ancient

monuments are protected by the ASI and another 3,000 or
so by the various State Archaeology Departments. Outside
this, however, heritage regulations are limited to a few cities
and areas. The good news however is that things seem to
be moving in the right direction with continuing NGO
campaigns and greater sensitivity and awareness about
heritage protection among the public.

Mumbai has the credit for becoming the first city in India to
have heritage regulations in place. Being the first of its kind,
the process took many years and was dogged by its own
complexities. Heritage regulations came into effect in early
1991 in Greater Bombay and then extended to other
Maharashtrian cities.

Apart from drafting regulations and drawing up a list of

heritage buildings, Maharashtra undertook an affiliated
process legislating on the matter. The Maharashtra Regional
and Town Planning Act was amended in 1994 to protect
heritage buildings and precincts and penalise unauthorised
changes to them.

By the end of 1995, the Union Environment Ministry had

formulated a draft heritage regulation. This was circulated
to all State Governments and Union Territories as a possible
model they could rely on when legislating on the matter.

The Maharashtra experiment formed the principal basis for

the draft, but significantly it widened the concept of heritage
by explicitly defining natural heritage and stressing the
importance of also protecting this. As a result, the
protection of natural heritage has become accepted as an
integral part of heritage conservation.

It is commonly assumed that heritage regulation measures

are wholly within the purview of States. But the Centre
enjoys substantial powers in lending statutory protection to
heritage sites or precincts. For instance, the Environment
Protection Act (EPA) may and has been used to impose
constraints on State-level authorities.

The best illustration of this is the 2001 notification under

the EPA that declared the region around the hill stations of
Mahableshwar and Panchgani as an eco-sensitive zone. Both
man-made and natural heritage are covered by the
notification, which lays down that all development and
construction activity at or around heritage sites shall be
regulated in accordance with the Union Environment
Ministry's model regulations of 1995. Efforts have been
under way to get the Ministry to extend the notification to
other areas.

A related power lies in the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ)

notification, which applies to areas within 500 metres of the
high tide line and also to areas falling within specified
distances of rivers and backwaters. One of the pleas in the
petitions challenging the QMC demolition in Chennai is that
the Marina stretch, which has been classified as CRZ-II, be
reclassified as CRZ-I (see main article).

If this were done, then no new construction would be

permitted within the 500 metres high tide line, making the
proposed new Secretariat a non-starter.

This brings us to the Judiciary, which of late has by and

large been playing a progressive role in supporting heritage
conservation efforts. For instance, it was the Bombay High
Court that spurred the Maharashtra Government to extend
the heritage regulations to the city of Nagpur. The Court
also had a role in the process that finally led to
Mahableshwar-Panchgani being declared an eco-sensitive
zone.

It was Maharashtra that showed the way but heritage

conservation efforts have spread to some other States — a
development that has raised hopes that State Governments
are finally willing to sit down, listen and take appropriate
action. Hyderabad gazetted heritage regulations, under
which both old buildings and unusual or distinctive rock
formations have been notified.

Heritage regulations have been enforced in Punjab, which

INTACH's vice-chairman, S.K. Mishra, says are an
improvement on the Mumbai model and were passed with
relative ease. West Bengal has gazetted an amendment to
the Calcutta Municipal Corporation Act and has also moved
to extend legislation to cover the entire State.

In other States such as Goa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya

Pradesh, model regulations have been drafted and it is only
a matter of time before heritage regulations are formally
extended to many other parts of the country. As for Tamil
Nadu, which is the focus of current attention, the
Government had only recently considered the enactment of
a Heritage Regulation Act to cover the whole State.

As a parallel process, there was a move to have Chennai

covered via an enlargement of one of the Development
Control Rules in the Town and Country Planning Act (see
main article). Everything was ready for Government
notification and whether the Government balked or merely
procrastinated is anyone's guess.

But with Ms. Jayalalithaa having decided to flatten QMC, the

questions that arise go beyond the unfortunate demolition
of buildings that occupied what a committee constituted
under the CMDA had itself declared a heritage precinct. The
questions now have widened to include the fate of the
heritage regulations themselves. — M.P.

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