Op Ed: By Patralekha Chatterjee
-Excerpt- Heritage has staged a comeback as the buzzword of the day. The Central government has announced tax incentives for new hotels coming up near World Heritage sites. In Delhi, the city where I live, the Archaeological Survey of India and the tourism ministry are reportedly working hard at turning the capital into a world-class heritage tourism hub in the run-up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games — around 50 monuments are going in for a grand makeover, museums are being refurbished, more heritage walks and heritage trails are being planned.
All this is splendid news if it materialises in time.
But without the involvement of ordinary people and communities there will not be that sense of history that the Sorbonne guard showed, nor will ordinary tourists have the experience that I had.
There are excellent examples of how heritage can be harnessed in the work of agencies like the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, Dastkar or the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. But such initiatives have to be replicated more widely.
Ismailimail 