Word: asi
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...biggest heritage site." But even conservationists like Thakur admit that it's impossible, even immoral, for a developing nation with a quarter of the world's poorest inhabitants to spend the fortune needed to preserve that history. The country's main heritage body, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), is so constrained financially that it limits its care to just 3,653 buildings?and, even for these, worries remain. The ASI's 2004-5 budget of $58 million works out at less than $16,000 per monument?and that's before paying for 8,000 staff and the running costs...
...past two decades, for example, was a dispute over Ayodhya in northern India, where in 1992 Hindu mobs tore down a 16th century Mughal mosque they believed to be built over Lord Ram's legendary temple; the furor over the site sparked riots that killed 2,000 people. The ASI found itself entangled in the controversy in 2003 when, under orders from the then Hindu nationalist government, it produced a grandiose, artist's impression of the buried temple, which many regarded as an incendiary political gesture rather than a serious archeological initiative...
...India's biggest problem, says Thakur, is that it lacks the manpower and financial resources to manage its historic riches. The ASI employs no qualified architects or conservationists, and monument care is split between a confusing cluster of local and national authorities, NGOs, religious orders, businesses and individuals. The Taj and its immediate environs come under six government agencies: the ministries of culture, environment and tourism, two city authorities and one state body. Thakur is careful not to condemn the ASI or the ministries, describing their staff as sincere professionals faced with an almost impossible task. But she also complains...
...great rival Ghalib is revealed to have been turned into a coal store; but most of the losses go unrecorded. I find it heartbreaking: every time I revisit one of my favorite monuments, it has either been overrun by a slum, unsympathetically restored by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), or simply demolished. By now, almost all the havelis of Old Delhi have been destroyed. According to historian Pavan Varma, the majority of the buildings he recorded in his book Mansions at Dusk 13 years ago no longer exist...
...Part of the problem is that there is little effective legislation protecting ancient monuments, and while archaeological sites are granted nominal guardianship by the ASI, there is no system of architectural listing, and India's rich heritage of late Mughal and colonial domestic architecture is mostly unprotected by law. In the competition between development and heritage, the latter inevitably gives...