The Government of India, since Independence in August 1947, has been harnessing our culture together with tourism to showcase country's diverse rich cultural glories to the world in order to attract tourists from across the world. This also helps the nation earn valuable foreign exchange as it generates a large scale employment in hospitality sector. Emerging globalization of Indian economy and the country growing as one of the fastest economy have been instrumental to enthuse private sectors to invest more and more in the cultural and hospitality segments of our economy.
However, a look at the heritage management in India exhibits a sorry state of affairs. Out of 3667 nationally protected heritage monuments and sites across the country under the aegis of the Archaeological Survey of India of the Union Ministry of Culture as on date, which constitutes a fraction of country's rich and varied monumental heritage, 249 Centrally Protected Monuments are encroached. According to the Ministry of Culture, 70 such monuments have been cleared under the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1971. For the rest, process of eviction is on. Added to this, a massive problem of inadequacy of staff to guard the Centrally Protected Monuments and dismal heritage management by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the apex body to protect, preserve and maintain such monuments, have compounded the problem further, as never before.
According to the Ministry of Culture, there are 3500 monument attendants and 789 persons from private security agencies guarding the national monuments all over India. Besides, 294 Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) attendants guard the Red Fort and 165 CISF personnel the world famous Taj Mahal. The meager number of guards points to an urgent need for creation of manpower at the ASI to guard these monuments in view of the growing number of nationally protected monuments being earmarked as the World Heritage Sites by the UNESCO, thus inviting growing worldwide attention and vigil in their upkeep and preservation.
Growing concern of the well meaning people from India and abroad over the encroachments of the nationally protected monuments aided by the failure of the ASI to get back the sites from the encroachers are sufficient reasons to assess comprehensively the dimensions of encroachments of such monuments and sites under the protection of the ASI to take action against encroachers in consultation with the State Governments and local administration and, if necessary, at the highest level of the Chief Minister. This should also be followed by increasing suitably the number of monument attendants on a war footing to check the incidents of encroachments and pilferages of vital artifacts in such monuments.
Meanwhile, the UPA Government has identified major thrust areas for the Eleventh Five Year Plan beginning April 2007 for the safeguarding and other protective measures in the area of Intangible Heritage and Cultural Diversity arising out of the UNESCO Convention, awareness creation on Intellectual Property Right (IPR) and setting up of a National IPR Cell for Creative Artists and Artisans, scheme for promotion and dissemination of awareness about Indian Culture and Cultural heritage, cultural heritage volunteer scheme, pilot scheme for cultural industries, centre for management of cultural resources, scheme for modernisation of museums in metro cities, setting up of a national mission on libraries, leading to a formation of a Commission and development of Jallianwala Bagh Memorial.
The thrust areas in the cultural sector during the current 11 th Plan period appear to be all round improvement of the infrastructure in the making to meet the growing challenges of the globalization of Indian economy and the country's strides as an emerging global economy and investment destination of the developed nations. Nevertheless, much will depend on how seriously we take up the challenges of improving our cultural segments especially the cultural and monumental heritage in terms of their upkeep, preservation and infrastructure in and around as well as their linkages to attract more and more foreign and domestic tourists. Buddhist Circuit in the eastern India and heritages in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh are emerging tourism-cum-pilgrimage centres attracting tourists from the Asian Tigers of the South-East and Far-East Asian regions, as also China. These require focused attention for their all round development if the country has to showcase its prowess as an emerging global player!#