 Welcome to this show, the series that we were doing since long on the Central Vista and as most of our viewers know that we were doing walk the talk along the Central Vista but after the pandemic we were unable to walk along the Central Vista and instead we are using these new logistics of the technology and just trying to understand more about the Central Vista and now earlier which was supposed to be just the domain of the architects in the country that it looked like that only the architects are vociferously opposing the construction of the new parliament just for our new viewers who have joined and who are not really aware of what the Central Vista is. The precinct extends from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to through along the Rajpath to the Indi again and of course it extends to the Yamuna. So today we have a professor AGK Menon. Thank you professor AGK Menon joining us. Professor AGK doesn't require much introduction. He is one of the founding members of INTAC and today we are going to discuss about the the left out parts of the Central Vista which we have not discussed in the past because we have discussed that look it's an idea which was termed as a fascistic idea some said it is not synced with the heritage of our country and we had historians in our show but today we are going to discuss something very special which has not really come to the fore. So thank you professor Menon joining us and straight away I mean if I could ask you one of very simple questions you know because I remember you were one of the leading figures in the INTAC and also otherwise to ensure that the precinct of the Central Vista is part of the world heritage domain or so on because I am in Simla. I don't know whether my camera can really shoot the majestic Himalaya just behind me yeah but and I remember we have that heritage track the world heritage track from Kalka to Simla we know the beauty of that and we know why it is so important to conserve it so what went wrong and how do you really view it now? Okay let me start off by a bit of an introduction and that is that the whole idea of heritage. Yes professor Menon. Yeah now what is heritage normally until INTAC was formed that is in 1984 by and large most people thought of heritage as monumental you know the Taj for secret etc that was considered an architectural heritage. However after INTAC was formed we enlarged the scope the vision and the idea it's not as though that we invented something it's all over the world they consider it but in India somehow we often thought of or usually thought of heritage as these monuments and just to give an idea of the scale ASI was the custodian government and they were saving about they were conserving about 3600 monuments and that at once strikes you as an anomaly because you know in a country like India 3600 it must be something more of course there's something more but secondly heritage is not only monuments heritage is many other things it could be your Haveli it could be the natural heritage it could be your intangible heritage could be hundreds of things but somehow in our minds that is what got established and even today we suffer from it we somehow feel that the heritage of Central Vista is only North Bloc, South Bloc, Rashtrapati Bhavan etc which were the monumental buildings and we cannot look at the Central Vista as anything beyond that and just to carry that idea a bit forward right now if you talk to the architect he will tell you what I'm saving the heritage North Bloc is saved South Bloc is saved Rashtrapati Bhavan what are you people complaining about so this is the huge gap in our imagination so when we complain that you are destroying Central Vista they say my god we're not you're just Jholavala is just complaining about anything that we do and we're not destroying it look we have saved it we're not destroying all these things we are even saving the parliament building we're building a new top parliament sure but the old one is saved and look the Central Vista the Rajput trees are there the landscape is there what are you complaining about so you see the gap in our imagination of what is heritage now that's just a brief introduction that we try to open that up in if I focus on Delhi as in Delhi there were about 170 monuments according to ASI but when Intak got into the act we said no they're much more and we identified 1200 monuments and these are minor monuments are the kinds of monuments it could be in Shah Jannabad could be Havelis could be anything but 1200 we said are worth preserving why because they represent our history they are evidence of our history so part of our agenda was that so in 2000 we got this publication out about the city's heritage and one of the things that we identified was precincts and we one of the precincts we two precincts we identified was Shah Jannabad and to Delhi so those are identified as heritage earlier they were not and again to emphasize the point the world all over the world they are about hundreds of world heritage cities not a single one in India and then you begin to wonder you mean to say in India 5000 years we don't have any heritage cities obviously there's a gap in our imagination not that we did not have it but we imagine Varanasi as heritage we didn't imagine Ujjain as heritage we didn't imagine Madurai as heritage and we didn't imagine uh Latin's bungalow zone as heritage or Shah Jannabad as heritage and yet it has all the characteristics all the uh the uh evidence of heritage so in 2000 we published this uh uh a book saying the heritage of Delhi in which these two precincts there were six heritage zone the 27 heritage zones but out of the 27th the master planner Delhi when it came out in 2007 accepted six they accepted all the 1200 monuments saying that yes Delhi has 1200 monuments not just 174 that ASI is saying but 1200 but it also very interestingly the master plan said that these are heritage so for the first time Latin's bungalow zone Shah Jannabad got uh legal notification the heritage now that was step one then in 2013 we approached the government and said look it is heritage the master plan says it's heritage but according to us it is world heritage it is almost definitely much higher just like Taj is India's heritage but it's also world heritage so we managed to persuade the government and it was very difficult because you know you have to go through the means of culture you have to ASI ASI says our work is not managed this few number of monuments you're adding cities to it now how are you going to manage anyway in all fairness after a lot of lobbying they accepted it and in 2013 the government of India finally sent a dossier which we prepared the intact Delhi chapter prepared as because again a very technical document that you're going to prepare to to UNESCO and it was sent uh in 2014 the Modi government came into the picture now the whole idea is that to them heritage is politics and what we are saying is heritage is not politics heritage is history we had some good history because some bad history some history we ashamed of some history we are proud of but heritage is history in history so we said that look this is part of it but the new government said no it is not our heritage our heritage and you are naming Shah Janabad which is Mughal heritage and you're naming Latins bungalow zone which is colonial heritage we don't consider its heritage so they withdrew it now of course it's a sovereign government our prime minister elected democracy etc etc has every right to do it and he did it now that is where matter stands and it stood until now because this heritage of Latins bungalow zone and central vista is in the UNESCO tentative list it's not yet accepted because India withdrew it tentative list now that Modi's second term comes then they take more action first action was because withdrawing it now they're saying this has to be destroyed because you know barbie masjid has been destroyed now these have to be destroyed and according to me this entire redevelopment project is a strategy to destroy it okay it is presented as something we are redeveloping we are upgrading if you read the bit so if I could just ask you a question because you know you brought up a very interesting aspect rate right from 2000 2014 and in 2014 that the government actually was not serious but did you ever comprehend in 2014 that such kind of redevelopment is going to take place what you qualify to be the destruction of the heritage okay now I'll come to the second point even as as we said that all this is heritage it got into the first problem which is that heritage is something to be protected and as intact we were at pains to say in a country like India we cannot preserve heritage because we don't have the money we don't have money to eat how are you going to have money to preserve heritage so we said that it is not preservation it is conservation conservation means development and we did many projects including Varanasi Boganesh or Ujjain where we conserved it and developed it so we said that similarly Latvian's bungalow zone and the central district can be developed so this is where matters stand however that politicians everyone takes a time to understand it so in their minds when we say that it is world heritage it means keep it frozen and we said nothing of the sort nothing can remain frozen things are evolving our needs are changing and so we have suggested many things that should be done and in fact when the project when the designer of the project came I remember talking to the architect and said look Mr Patel several things can be done it is not as though we as conservationists are saying nothing should be done everything is wrong with your project we are saying nothing of the sort we are saying a lot of things can be done new buildings can be built all over the world they've done it look at Paris look at Paris they built hundreds of buildings and it's a world heritage city look at Beijing look at the 230 other world heritage cities in the world they all built none are frozen similarly this is this does not have to be frozen but as I told you the first point I made the mindset the mindset somehow is that heritage is something that is frozen and has to be kept frozen and intact has been trying very hard to say no we cannot afford to do that it has to develop so to answer your question a lot of things can be done in central Vista but it has to be done carefully and as intact we are done over so what does that mean I mean so what does that mean if you if you if you qualify that to me then it has to be done carefully yeah now I give you what does that mean all I can give you as examples say take Bhubaneshwar for example old Bhubaneshwar we did the conservation plant of Bhubaneshwar where we showed how the old Bhubaneshwar can develop and we made a whole budget you've been in the municipality you know that you work on budgets you know you work on projects so if I'm going to conserve I can't come to you and say look I want money for conservation it's a get run along you know where am I going to have money for conservation I don't have money for roads I don't have money for sewers and water supply how am I going to give you money for conservation agreed we said but give us money for the following projects and these projects should be done in such a way that it will not destroy heritage you don't have to break it down you don't do this you can do this a road can be built it doesn't have to go through the building it has to go it can go by the side and conserve it it's it the many I might say we don't want to get into that because of technical subject but the point we made is the the term we use was the conservation can be development oriented in other words the conservation does not have to be preservation oriented it can be development oriented and we have said the same thing about central vista when we say central vista is uh worded my I went through all that when I was trying to convince the government that issue world heritage obviously these questions came up obviously ASI asked this question obviously they had all this high power committee saying that look what are you talking about you would say we can't do anything here and I had to convince them that look at this look at that it's not my job it you know I'm not the DDA I'm not the ASI and I've got no authority I'm just a NGO suggesting this should be done so but yet all I can answer your questions by saying that yes development can take place in the following way and I can give you so many examples where I can show you it can be done and it has been done so to answer your second question it can a lot of things can be done okay thanks the process you get I remember being to keep you know the the capital of all the habitat three years of that yeah part of the delegation and I remember it's a world heritage site by the way I mean it's it's I mean if you if you go there I mean there's a stark distinction between the new Keto and the old Keto how they have conserved absolutely do you not think I mean something that sort could have been easily imagined and I mean if of course it could have been done you know for example take a simple thing like he wants to build a new secretariat for everyone it's a central visitor it can be anywhere without the kind of technology you and I are talking and you are sitting in Simla I'm sitting in Delhi we are talking to each other conducting a business we are not incapacitated because you're not sitting next to me actually yeah true true yeah so you know we can we can the governments can function by anywhere so the argument I would have used is that yes if you want to build a central secretariat wrong idea bad idea agreed but if you want to do it build it somewhere else build it in Dwarka build it in Narela build it anywhere and create a new city and if you look at historically we talk about seven cities of Delhi none of them destroyed the earlier city even the British did not that's interesting yeah yeah could you just explain that I mean that's very something very interesting I mean and that all those seven things that all those seven cities that came up yeah I mean none actually just opposed on on on the previous one yeah this is a peculiar thing about about Indian cities because in most of the world if you go to London you'll find layers and layers of cities are one above the other Roman either Greeks built over the Roman the others came and built over the Rome etc etc and yeah not in India in India somehow we built next to each other good bad there are the reasons one reason I can give you quite a funny way is that we thought it was bad luck to build on someone else I ruined you know be that as it may we did not and even the British did not British did not demolish Shah Jainabad they built it next to it Shah Jainabad did not build Tughlaqabad they built next to it so this has been a historical precedent and if Mr Modi in his power with 300 plus seats wanted to do something you can build a Modi Nagar in Narela in Dwarka in wherever and made it like others so in Berlin they did that Hitler did that Mosulini did it so I'm just saying if that was a vision it could have been done so here when you say I want to do it on Central Vista it is a problematic issue and as a conservationist I argue not as a politician as a conservationist it's a wrong idea. Professor Benan if I could just come back to Intak and the Visavi the Central Vista I remember Intak had written to the government and the ministry of housing and urban affairs at the outset of this project have you heard something from them and I mean it's really jitters me you see why because I find Intak even going down to the level of say and not to the level I mean but like conserving a temple in Pontus I have been in Himachal Pradesh but I haven't heard a word from Intak why is it so? No I'll answer that question in my own way not answer directly because that may not sound too good but you see when the first designs came out in late November December we were horrified and you know I know Bimal Patel we know Hardeep Puri we know the government you know it's not as though you and I are not familiar with them we are not strangers we try to contact them so in good faith we drop a thing saying that look gentlemen you can do a lot of things but can we please do it carefully and we are there to help you why because you don't know Central Vibhya, we have done a dossier on it we've got enormous amount of data we've got a whole lot of surveys we've got a whole lot of issues and what I even told them was that can you please re-nominate this place as Central Vista and as World Heritage and still build your buildings that will be a lesson if you can then you'll break this taboo we have in India that we cannot develop a World Heritage Site so I'm saying here's your challenge I told them I told Bimal Patel that I told Bimal Patel I said look you want to do this you are an architect you want your project have it but if you want to do this we'll have a feather on your cap you have done it the right way but of course we heard nothing we heard nothing from Mr Puri we heard nothing from Mr Bimal Patel we heard nothing from the powers that be and it's not as though we don't know them it's not as though we are strangers intact has quite a few ministries on their governing council but there is some taboo that you are not allowed to interfere in this project and that bothers me so if we contacted them they didn't say and so when you say the intact didn't intact did but in a very shall be quote civilized unquote we did not go around shouting at them we tried to negotiate with them and as I said someone like Bimal Patel I know I don't have to shout at him I if I were to argue with you I'll argue with you why would I want to shout at you so I said we can negotiate them but no there was absolutely no response okay Professor Menon I think there's something very interesting that I mean of course it's an international precedent that it's not just the conservation of the building but also the usage of the building I know for a particular use and now all of a sudden we are finding the north and the south south block would be museums and then even the parliament was supposed to be a museum in India so how really I mean understand I mean what do you think about it you see the degrees and degrees of conservation ideal would be preserved but as I told you in the beginning preservation may be a problem so you allow development you allow usage several things now as I said the whole degrees you might find it you might find north log in a ruin and you want to restore it you may not say I can do administration again I may make it to a museum and that all over the country you'll find a lot of conservation are made into hotels are made into into museums but that is not the situation here this was a functioning building it they claim it had some problems the seismic and all that it's possible to resolve it I'll give you one example I'll digress a bit here one of the very first projects when intact was formed I did was I was called to Bangalore because Bangalore chapters that look we have a huge problem we have this beautiful high court it's called Ataraka Cherry 130 years old the government is wanting to demolish it because they want to have many more courts you know the usual the the number of courts are required the building is 130 years old it's falling apart etc etc so intact sent me this is 1985 you know long time back and I went and examined and the engineers came and tried to convince me that we have to do it I looked at it I said look you know I can have an engineering study done but I look at it and say look this is building not going to fall at all but we can do studies to show what the seismic problems are I can see one beam there's a crack we can handle it this building is good enough for the next 100 years and I gave my report at that time civilized people were there I remember who was it Mr. Higide was the minister there PWD minister he listened he agreed and today they're really proud of the fact that Ataraka Cherry is still there and they've got more courts and it is functioning and I say well there's a perfect example of conservation so something that Bangalore Ataraka Cherry we had the same arguments that they're using here oh we need more space we need to do this this is a big structure this sees big problems 1985 we faced the same problem in Ataraka Cherry in Bangalore and we resolved it and they're happy about it today the new generation of Bangaloreans are very happy that Ataraka Cherry is still in the midst so I think it's degrees and degrees of handling this problem it could have been handled I don't see any reason why this building had to be emptied out there are reasons why it needed to be emptied out but again as someone has asked if it's unsafe for administration is it safe for museums? There's no answer to that you know of course it's a pay for museum it's safe for the administration but we know the building well because as intact then chapter they done studies there and all that it requires a huge amount of maintenance that's right stencil which requires a huge amount of maintenance maintenance is different from alteration change etc one has to maintain it maintaining the significance of the management so it could be done so that net of removing it functions from there and let me try to put it this way would a minister of partner affairs sits in South Glock or would he sit in one of the donor shaped modern buildings that they're going to be sitting in you tell me you know psychologically would the minister of yeah want to conduct his business in South Glock what do you want to do it in one of those donor shaped buildings that is being built for him now and remember the second problem there you already got a new building minister of external affairs they're going to demolish it it's five years that's strange five years old built to purpose going to be demolished and going to put him into a donut I just don't understand it so obviously you know it's inexplicable okay professor Menon if I could have the last two questions to you one is quite technical and of course another one is for our common viewers I mean I will ask that the that's the second question the first one is I think we've learned that there would be some eight stories and and also I mean the idea of the original skyline would also be validated so how do you really view and what is the relevance of a skyline okay to professor Menon now it's slowly slowly be understanding that's becoming an issue of the people I mean common because you know open spaces what will happen to those so as I said in the beginning that this trajectory from the architects to the common people after all this is the heritage of the common people so they own this heritage I mean so how do you understand how should they how should they be linked to this entire I want to say struggle but the part of part of the movement that that's getting developed to protect this into this stuff yeah so let's answer the second question first people we know that this is a people's place this is a democratic space after these buildings are built what's going to happen is going to be a security zone someone called it a special political zone spz someone it'll become a spz so it's why is it going to be a special you know right now even today you can't walk to north north south north there are barriers there security because you've got all the ministries there you can go there to take a selfie yeah basically there but it's not like old days I don't buy as a youngster you could cycle up to there and come back I can't do that anymore that is what's going to happen to central vista now with all these ministries coming up next to central vista this space will still have trees still have lawns we still have water bodies but it will have areas cctv you cannot picnic you can't do it move on move on move on you know nothing so common man is going to get work and take a place like deli then space where a lot of people would have open space this is their space this is where they picnic this is where they come to have an ice cream this is public public place somewhere where you have leisure also public places where you protect public place where you take a selfie all those in the public places all that's going to be is now going to become a security place with a barrier because and quite rightly so because of the security people will come and say no no no people can't come here because the government government is here a terrorist may come we've had it so it's become a security place so in answer to your second question people are going to be described of a very valuable public place by doing this first question what you've got an eight-story building earlier the trees of the skyline you could see the sky beyond the trees yeah if you look carefully maybe you could see nirvana one maybe you could see inconsequential today after all this going to a balance of buildings you know a wall of buildings next to each other all the way from the vijay chalk to india gate that is going to be the change in skyline so now it's going to be a hard skyline with this wall on both sides earlier you had a strong skyline you had three they're different and yet you're building it's not a different type of building and as I said it's a matter of their concession they say it's lower than india gate you know as you move favor to the public they're reducing the height of the by few centimeters below india gate you see it's peaceful it is wrong that's what the problem is okay but i'm provoked to ask last question again sure you're provoked enough so you can go ahead so what do you see in the future and how do you see the future the future and the redevelopment you know after the pandemic the supreme court has also said no construction is going to happen but you know the sinister move is very sinister so i mean i have i mean optimistic and be very practical so you see central vista is going to be destroyed with the 300 plus seats in the parliament he doesn't even have to ask the parliament he's doing it he didn't have to ask me for god's sake who am i so okay you and i are talking because you're asking me a question he's not going to ask me a question but okay so it's going to be destroyed but the answer to your question our cities are going to be destroyed because now you realize that urban development is a political play thing we always knew urban development was a capitalistic play thing you know big projects lot of scams lot of money and our cities are being destroyed even delhi is being destroyed you know look at your kidwai nagar look at you know all this happening right now there was money power now political power is becoming so the future of cities in india is bleak my friend is bleak and it is made in much more stark with this pandemic it should have gone the other way we should have made it much more humane much more human it's going to be the other way around unfortunately well thanks professor manana i just remember one of the anecdotes during my student days when i was a student activist in hemachal university and the indian state of advanced studies was being converted into a hotel yes we protested we objected with all our strength that we had and of course there was this whole aura like you people intellectuals architects who said no no we shouldn't be handed over to hotel today that means two of advanced studies still remains the in issue and i wish i mean i don't know but i still wish that the central vista also remains the central vista without the redevelopment but as you as you as you rightly pointed out i mean the challenges are really really great and we all are witnessing that thanks professor manan we'll definitely join on yeah so some other day with with uh yeah maybe with another topic yeah i because because from the central vista to maybe urbanism the kind of aesthetics that we are getting in the urban realm thanks thanks a lot okay thank you