Polishing the old walls

Kolkata's old buildings will gradually get a facelift and the first face pack will be applied to Dalhousie Square.

The Left in West Bengal, on a new high after a historic seventh straight win in the assembly polls, is turning to window-dressing.

The slur about Kolkata being the city of garbage seems to have stuck, finally. And where better to start the clean up process than Dalhousie Square, the area adjoining Writers' Building.

Says Alapan Bandopadhyay, municipal commissioner, "There is renewed emphasis on the Dalhousie Square area to refurbish it in keeping with its historical importance."

Sometime later this month, Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will start work on a pilot project to renovate a 1.2-km stretch of pavement in front of the GPO Building.

According to Anindya Karforma, chief municipal architect and town planner, the exercise will involve putting in street furniture including railings, lights and dividers that will be better suited to the present times than the era in which it was built.

It's not all prettification and considerable pain is being taken to get the right design and material. For instance, granite kerb-stones are being sourced from quarries because pre-fabricated concrete ones did not go with cobbled pavements.

The project will also pay attention to large banyan trees whose outlying roots may be damaging the structure, and more importantly, will check hawkers who sell all manner of postal paraphernalia over there.

While great hype surrounds the renovation of Dalhousie House, what's interesting is the manner in which Rs 1 crore is being generated for the project. In March 2006, KMC established an escrow account for its work on heritage preservation.

This was over and above KMC's heritage conservation fund, financed by budgetary allocations, with which it had undertaken projects like the restoration of Star Theatre and the documentation of historical buildings.

The capital in this escrow fund has been raised as "voluntary donation" from developers, says Bandopadhyay, in return for certain "relaxation" that has been allowed by the heritage conservation committee.

Already, the fund has garnered Rs 1.10 crore with Rs 1 crore coming from the developer who was granted permission to build a multi-storied building on the grounds surrounding the Cassimbazar Rajbati in Sealdah, a place that features in the list of heritage structures.

This goes against the heritage guidelines of the KMC Act, 1980 which lays down that there can be no fresh constructions in the vicinity of a heritage building, and even if any are mooted, they should be constructed in a manner to be in sync with the character of the original building.

Thankfully, things are moving in the right direction. For a long time heritage conservation efforts of the city authorities, especially in Dalhousie Square and adjoining areas, have been mere policy announcements with very little work being done on ground.

Recently the chief minister had announced grandiose plans to build underground car-parks in Laldighi (red pond) and Curzon Park and a hawking-zone at Shahid Minar a, little away in Esplanade, to relieve the congestion around Dalhousie Square.

The car-parking at Laldighi has been a long-standing proposal which began rather ambitiously with three-four storeys going underground to house hundreds of cars. Now it will be a two-storey affair meant for sarkari cars alone.

There were also plans to build a multi-storied parking lot on an empty plot on Old Court House Street that runs through the area. But that has since been abandoned because it is near the Currency Building that has been declared as a structure of national importance.

What's more, the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) will not allow such a different looking structure to come up.

Clearly then, the Dalhousie Square restoration has been a case of two steps forward and one step going back. Although it was in 1996 that the area around Laldighi (red pond) was declared a heritage precinct under the Land Use Development and Country Planning guidelines, no one has a master plan for the restoration project and various departments who have a say in the matter have little coordination among themselves.

KMC wants to change this picture by involving all concerned departments including the State Public Works department, Kolkata Police and the Metro Railway to name just a few.

"The municipal corporation wants to make concerted efforts to free the Dalhousie Square area of hoardings and free the horizon of unseemly encroachments," informs Bandopadhyay.

Continuous efforts of the corporate sector and NGOs after Dalhousie Square was listed in the 100 most endangered heritage sites by World Monument Fund in 2003 has raised public awareness of the need for heritage conservation.

Last month, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) stepped into the picture with the setting up of an Urban Art Group (UAG), which will help KMC in its efforts of heritage conservation. In fact CII will also fund the blue plaques that will be placed outside 25 buildings in the area.

The plaques will list the famous individuals who stayed in the building and will also give details of the architectural peculiarities that have been there. Instead of a statutory body, there will be an informal advisory body whose recommendations will have no legal binding.

Along with UAG, a nodal body called the Kolkata Regeneration Society will oversee such development projects in Kolkata.

Headed by the governor, this society will have representation from all government departments, KMC, NGOs and any other body that might have a stake in the area.

The society will oversee all development projects that may be proposed for the stretch extending from the Strand Road to Chowringhee.

With so many organisations trying to give Kolkata's old look a new charm, citizens can look forward to an improved Dalhousie Square.