‘WE’RE WORKING WITH NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
DR MAHESH SHARMA, Union minister of state for culture (independent charge) and minister of state for environment, forest and climate, in a candid interview on the Taj with Executive Editor DAMAYANTI DATTA.
Excerpts:
Q: With the Supreme Court taking a stern stand on the state of the Taj, what is your reaction? After all, your ministry is responsible for its upkeep.
A: The Taj Mahal is India’s pride, the second most visited monument in South Asia and the sixth in the world. Hence, we are contemplating long-term measures for protecting and conserving the Taj. In June, senior officers, including the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, those from the environment ministry, the Uttar Pradesh government, the TTZ [Taj Trapezium Zone], along with other stakeholders, met at a day-long meeting, where long-term and short-term measures for the protection of the Taj and Agra were discussed, especially making 500 metres around the Taj free of plastic pollution. We propose to hold further meetings with all the stakeholders, including the UP chief minister, very soon either in Delhi or Lucknow. We will take decisions for protection and showcasing the Taj in a time-bound manner.
Q: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the Taj?
A: First, Agra’s pollution, traffic and infrastructure are not in line with the importance of this monument. A major concern is the crematorium nearby, which is blowing carbon dust towards the Taj. The Yamuna is polluted, insects are thriving in it, dropping excreta on the marble and discolouring it. River pollution is a nationwide problem. The government has created a separate ministry for this and they are on board with us. We are working with national and international organisations to ensure the monument’s long life. Q: What are the initiatives you have taken?
A: Now that the same party is at the Centre and the state, work is definitely being done in a more cohesive manner. We have taken measures such as an interpretation centre, eating joints, cleanliness and battery-operated cars near the Taj. High-value ticket users are being given separate clean toilet facilities, kits with water bottles, information etc. when they enter. E-ticketing facility has been introduced by this government—people don’t have to stand in a queue, they can buy tickets when they start from their country or home. We have restricted the time for visitors to three hours. Earlier people used to enter in the morning and sit there until late evening. We have been able to control the crowds. The National Environmental Engineering Research Institute recommended a restriction to the number of visitors to the Taj. So there is a separate Rs 200 ticket for people who want to visit the mausoleum. We have been cleaning the marble regularly; the multani mitti pack has shown good results.
Q: How is the funding of the Taj decided?
A: Any collection being done by the ASI at the Taj or any other monument goes to the consolidated fund of the country. Whatever we may collect there, we cannot use that money. The budget sanctioned by the GoI to the ministry of culture is utilised via the ASI. The budget has two components: one part goes to the ASI and the other to the Agra Development Authority via the state government. This fund is used by the ADA mostly in and around the Taj. There is no monument-specific budget, but the funds are released as per requirement.
Q: Why does the Taj not have a stakeholders’ committee, essential for every world heritage site?
A: It is a good suggestion and we will take steps to involve public representatives and declare a stakeholders’ committee for the Taj.
THE TAJ IS PERHAPS ONE OF THE MOST MISMANAGED MONUMENTS IN INDIA WHERE CRORES ARE SPENT ON CONSERVATION AND TOURIST MANAGEMENT AND YET THE WOES OF THE TOURISTS DO NOT END
culture and for environment, forest and climate change, was taking a vow, along with MPs, MLAs, state government officials, local administration, public representatives and NGOs to make 500 metres around the Taj plastic free.
But at the Taj, water bottles, polythene bags, shoe covers and snack wrappers discarded by tourists are a common eyesore. According to ASI officials, every day, 12,000-20,000 discarded bottles are removed from the grounds. Not just that, the city generates about 180 tonnes of plastic waste per month. Research conducted by professors H.K. Thapak and P. Rajaram of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Jiwaji University, Gwalior, showed that decomposed plastic garbage produces methane gas that contributes to the yellowing of the Taj marble.
All this, despite the fact that the city has had a ban on plastic use since 2014, when district administration and municipal authorities even announced a plan for barricades at Yamuna ghats to stop locals from throwing garbage and polythene into the river. “Taj Mahal is one of the most mismanaged monuments in India,” says Agra Tourist Welfare Chamber Secretary Vishal Sharma. “Crores are spent on its conservation, yet the tourists’ woes do not end.”
Dance of Pests
The green stain on marble has created the biggest scare about the Taj Mahal’s health. To Professor Girish Maheshwari, head of the School of Entomology at Agra’s St John’s College, and his team, these are caused by tiny, non-biting, midges, called Chironomus. Millions of males and females emerge from the Yamuna between 6 pm and 8 pm, mate in the air, then attracted by Taj’s shiny marble, settle on its walls. They survive for 2-3 days and before dying, cast off faeces the colour of green, from the partially digested chlorophyll from the algae they feed on. And this is what stains the Taj marble.
“Their sudden emergence indicates deeper changes taking place in Yamuna water,” he says. “The water is turning highly eutrophic, or nutrient rich, near the Taj, with higher concentration of phosphorus and underlying sediments, impacting population of small fish that feed on them.” The chlorophyll and faecal matter are water soluble and can be cleaned easily, but these are invasive species and, left to breed uncontrolled, may lend the marble a permanent greenish tint.
Black Smear Mystery
The research on the pollution discolouring the Taj has taken a new direction and can be used to evaluate the potential benefits of policy interventions in and around Agra. That valuable research comes from an international team of researchers, including from IIT Kanpur, conducted between 2014 and 2017. “Research has shown that poor air quality is responsible for the soiling and discolouration of the Taj,” says Professor Sachi Nand Tripathi, Department of Civil
Engineering and Center for Environmental Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur. While measures have been taken to curb the impact of local air pollution around the Taj— from restricting vehicles near the complex, closing over 200 enterprises in Agra, requiring iron foundries to instal scrubbers and filters on their smokestacks, prohibiting new polluting enterprises within the buffer zone around the mausoleum and, most recently, banning cowdung cake burning as cooking fuel—the specific components of air pollution responsible had not been identified.
With that in mind, the researchers started probing the ambient air in and around the Taj. Their studies showed that the discolouration of the Taj was due to high concentrations of particles: black carbon (soot), brown carbon and dust deposition, primarily coming from human activity in the city, especially biomass burning, or open combustion of municipal solid waste, wood and dung cake burning, trash and crop residue burning apart from diesel emission and smoking vehicles. “The rapid growth of urban population and limited infrastructure leave large volumes of trash accumulating in the streets, frequently burned openly on roadsides and in residential and commercial areas,” explains Tripathi.
Mud-pack on Marble
Mix together Multani mitti, cereals, milk and lime. Apply, dry, wash and glow. The Taj has been getting that facepack—traditionally used by Indian women—on marble walls stained by grime and dirt from air pollution,since 1994. A relentless process, where the clay is added in layers until an inch-deep, left to dry for 24 hours, then washed off with distilled water. Unfortunately, the ‘new look’ does not last and the ASI has had to use it repeatedly in 2002, 2008 and 2015, to combat the corrosive effects of air pollution on marble. To octogenarian historian Ram Nath, an authority on Mughal art and architecture, the pack may have triggered further yellowing of the Taj. Multani mitti is a bleaching agent, he explains. It simply strips the marble of the original polish, vajra lep, a concoction of local ingredients used traditionally in India for centuries that acts as a permanent treatment, and opens up the pores, making the marble vulnerable to environmental degradation. “Has the ASI studied the long-term effects of regular mud pack on marble?” he asks.
The Vanishing Greens
It was in 2006 that the Supreme Court directed the ASI to develop the Taj Heritage Corridor—over 20 hectares of a garbage-dumping site between Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal—as a green buffer, to insulate the monument from air pollution, especially sand particles. The strong winds in May-July from the dry Yamuna riverbed as well from around Bharatpur in Rajasthan, usually at 30-45 kmph but peaking up to 100 kmph in dust storms, lash against the Taj, and over time scar the surface. Planting tree barriers is an age-old protective measure. “But it has taken more than a decade for the work to start,” says Dr Sanjay Chaturvedi, orthopaedic surgeon and secretary of Agra Citizens Council. “It was in August 2015 that the central government issued a preliminary notification to bring the heritage corridor under the ASI’s purview. It has finally started in May 2018.” But local environmentalists say that the heritage corridor was, legally speaking, an encroachment on the Yamuna river bed.
TO TRANSFORM AGRA IN AN AGE OF “EXPERIENCE ECONOMY”, INDIA MAY HAVE SOMETHING TO LEARN FROM OTHER COUNTRIES LIKE THE UK, WHERE HERITAGE TOURISM HAS EVOLVED AS A VITAL PART OF THE ECONOMY
INSECTS ARE BIO-INDICATORS OF WATER QUALITY. AS ENTOMOLOGY PROFESSOR GIRISH MAHESHWARI POINTS OUT, THEIR SUDDEN EMERGENCE INDICATES DEEPER CHANGES ARE TAKING PLACE IN THE YAMUNA WATER
Shravan Kumar Singh of the Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation Society says, “The park has been built just behind the Taj and distanced the Yamuna from it.”
Great Foundation Secret
The official historian of Shah Jahan, Abd al-Hamid Lahawri, wrote in detail about the building of the Taj but not about its foundation in the Padshahnama. “There are no historical records available for the subsoil profile of the Taj,” says Professor S.C. Handa, civil engineer and former director of IIT, Roorkee, who had earlier surveyed the Taj. “Nor has there been any attempt on the part of the government to ever make a borehole at the site to be able to analyse and respond should any threat ever arise.” From existing records, it seems likely that the base of the foundation was made of a series of deep wells, filled with concrete, lime, stone, rubble, capped together with a wooden box-like structure, on which the mausoleum was built, he says.
But given the wear and tear of the structure and the fact that the level of water in the Yamuna is receding, there has been speculation whether that could make the foundation fragile, putting the Taj at risk of sliding into the mud. The foundation was buried deep into the earth, well below the river basin. “If the base were to shift or decay,”says Handa, “a substantial section of the tomb would sink inside the earth.” To Professor Nath, the Taj stands on the edge of the Yamuna. Its builders never anticipated the drying up of the river. “It is an essential part of the architectural design, and if the river dies, the Taj cannot survive,” he says.
Archaeologist Bhuvan Vikrama, chief of ASI, Agra, disagrees. “The subsurface foundation of the Taj is quite stable,” he says. He also mentions that according to the Survey of India and Central Buildings Research Institute, Roorkee, there has been no change in the structure in the past 60 years. But experts have been asking the ASI to conduct a
geotechnical survey of the Taj since the 1980s. P.B.S. Sengar, former archaeologist with ASI, Agra, had written in Purattatva, the journal of the Indian Archaeological Society in 1995, ‘Due to its age, the effects of environmental and geotechnical changes, besides its own massive weight over the years, some specific, visible signs are noticed which need due attention. These include leakage of water inside, cracks in the veneer stones, out of plumb minarets, loss of inlay pieces, and loss of cohesion in the mortar. Since so many different types of factors are involved, it would be prudent to make a full geotechnical and other relevant studies before undertaking any major conservation project. Otherwise, the conclusions drawn may be totally faulty.’ No such study has been taken up so far.
The Hordes Descend
On a normal day, some 40,000 tourists visit the Taj, but the number can rise up to as much as 70,000 on weekends and holidays. ‘Tourists are in close proximity to the white marble walls of the main mausoleum, which gets discoloured due to continuous touching and rubbing by hand,’ according to an environmental engineering report by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, in 2015-16. And this happens especially at the tourist bottlenecks inside the Taj: first, the main gate, then the entry to the white marble floor and then the main mausoleum. The NEERI report recommends that the maximum number of tourists the Taj should accommodate at any point should not cross 10,000.
The ASI has now come up with a new idea to regulate tourist traffic inside the monument: turnstile gates and online tickets. A new software is being designed to accommodate plastic tokens for turnstiles as well as online QR-code printed tickets for the website. Members of the Agra Tourist Welfare Chamber, however, say that they had suggested these measures almost 10 years ago, but bureaucratic red-tape delayed their implementation. “Limiting the number of tourists is not a solution, but creates a bigger problem by generating a bad reputation for the city,” says member Vishal Sharma. “While the Agra Development Authority earns crores each year through a toll tax imposed on tourists visiting local monuments, the toll tax money is mostly used in development work unconnected to the Taj.”
Changing Taj for Citizens
For the citizens of Agra, the Taj experience is changing. There was a time when the Taj’s ticket was just 50 paise for anyone who wanted to enter the monument
and spend time there, irrespective of nationality. Moonlit views were not restricted by any court orders and thousands of locals and tourists thronged to view a very Taj-specific phenomenon, the chamki, or glitter, caused by various facets and angles of the mausoleum catching the moonlight in a bedazzling array of light. Today, the Taj has become a heavily guarded fortress with tiered entry tickets, hi-tech security and it’s hard to see chamki, as night-time entry is banned for security reasons. “We have grown up with the Taj, now live and work around it, says Sandeep Arora, hotelier and president of the Agra Tourism Development Foundation. “But with constant controversies and restrictions, it doesn’t feel like our own any more.”
Arora’s budget hotel is on what was once the main road to the Taj, leading up to the Royal Gate or the South Gate (Sidhi Darwaza). It is one of the many in the area, with rooftop restaurants and a direct view of the Taj. The market aligned to the street houses stone craftsmen, petha makers, textile and other shops selling souvenirs, refreshments and shoes, on arcaded verandahs. This year, the South Gate has been closed by the ASI, because X-ray machines—recommended by the Intelligence Bureau two years ago—could not be installed. With the flow of tourists through the gate ebbing, a pall of gloom now hangs over the area. “Thousands of people earn livelihood from tourist-centric activities here,” says Arora. “Everybody is worried about the impact on shops and hotels.”
Of the Days to Come
The Taj is under siege. But not for the first time. It went through extensive repairs within four years of completion, in 1652. It has been looted, ransacked, almost destroyed and nearly auctioned off in the past. Nadir Shah’s soldiers, the Jats of Bharatpur, the East India Company traders—all have made off with its jewels and carpets, chandeliers and lamps, silver doors and gold railings. Militants from Punjab and Kashmir have threatened to blow it up. The story that lies hidden is how the world’s most famous monument to love, loss and longing survived every time.
What would Shah Jahan have done, had he been around? The fifth Mughal emperor had a reserved personality, records the Shahjahannama. He would probably have set about managing the crowd, first. He would have restored tourist facilities, just as he had set up caravanserais—open-air squares edged with shopping arcades to provide shelter and entertainment to travellers, while the revenue from shops would have financed the upkeep of the Taj. A perfectionist, he would have started daily meetings with archaeologists, engineers and architects, setting up a board of supervisors and a core creative unit, just as he did with the Taj. He would have sought out global experts, as he did for the Taj—masons from Iran and Central Asia, sculptors from Bukhara, calligraphers from Syria and Persia, stone-cutters from Balochistan, pietra dura craftsmen from Italy. And he would have made sure that his Taj would remain a “masterpiece”, to quote court historian Muhammad Amin Qazwini, “of the days to come”. The Taj has been with us for the last 12 generations. Can we pass it on to the next 12?
THE GOVERNMENT MUST CONSULT GLOBAL EXPERTS WORKING ON WORLD-CLASS MONUMENTS AND ALSO TAP INTO TRADITIONAL CONSERVATION KNOWLEDGE AND BEST PRACTICES TO RESTORE THE TAJ