Implementation Action Team: Cultural Heritage Promoting Quality of Life and Sustainable Development in the At-Risk Megacity Periphery of Kolkata

The areas targeted by the Implementation Action Team (IAT) are cities on the banks of Hugli River in West Bengal, India. The origins of the unique value of much of their built heritage can be traced back to European trading and fortification (the French in Chandannagar from the 1670s, the Danes urbanizing Serampore from the 1750s and Barrackpore being developed by the British in the 1770s). During the nineteenth century, Indian merchants and traders who enriched themselves supplying the Europeans had grand residences built in a highly original hybrid style: their Palladian facades mirrored the public buildings built by the Europeans, but their cloistered inner courtyards were geared to the climate, multiple family occupancy and to Hindu devotional practice. The importance of this wealth of built heritage and the hybrid cultural heritage that has sprung from it in terms of food cultures, musical traditions, language variation etc, led the UK historian of heritage conservation Philip Davies to comment in 2015 that the Hugli 'is not just an Indian river but belongs to the world'. The state of West Bengal lies below the median in terms of many of the standard development markers when compared against other Indian states and the state of the heritage and tourism sectors reflect this. For example, the first hotel for overseas visitors opened in Serampore only in 2018. The economic liberalization of India starting in 1991, however, has led to the Hugli Corridor being subjected to overwhelming and accelerating urbanization increasing the population density, but this wave of so-called development has put domestic built heritage at extreme risk. The developers' imperative is that its riverine environment and excellent commuter rail links make the Hugli Corridor the ideal suburban dormitory pendant to the megacity of Kolkata (population 14.03M in the 2011 census). The Hugli Corridor's Unique Selling Point, therefore, also places it at the highest risk. In the absence of any enforceable planning law and building control, hundreds of heritage properties have been demolished and replaced by three-storey, identikit, concrete flats. IAT's partners, the West Bengal Heritage Commission and the Serampore Initiative have both done important work, listing and renovating seven public buildings, but the IAT's blended mix of wealth-creation, renovation, education, well-being and documentary film pathways will show the West Bengal state government a diverse toolkit of ways to invest resources to preserve and develop the region's cultural and built heritage before it is too late. Crucially, the IAT will do this through the people and organisations that its predecessor project, the Hugli River of Cultures Project (HRCP), won and up-skilled for the cause of heritage. The predecessor AHRC-ICHR funded Hugli River of Cultures Project documented heritage assets and sensitized large numbers of people into how the river connects them, but the IAT's pathway activities will make selected key individuals even more active throughout 2020. Those individuals will no longer be only witnesses and co-creators of heritage knowledge, they will move up to the next level and apply the IAT's tools to built and cultural heritage and used both to create wealth and well-being for themselves in a sustainable manner. When in ends in January 2021, the Implementation Action Team (IAT) will show the new agency that West Bengalis from diverse socio-economic groups can have in creating bottom-up heritage infrastructure in their state (pop 98.8M, 2018), thus marking a radical and much-needed change of course from the overwhelming top-down, culturally elitist and (rather unfortunate) superficial efforts that have characterized official interventions to date (not WBHC). It is only with active intervention and skilled local people that effective action can be taken to address the present heritage emergency caused by urban sprawl and to prepare this low-lying region for climate change

This section should be read in conjunction with the IAT's Work Plan in the attachments. The IAT is constructed as a series of separate, but partially chronologically overlapping phases which intensify practical collaboration between its UK and Indian teams and their state and private and third sector collaborators and partners in April, August and January.
The IAT's partnership with West Bengal Heritage Commission (WBHC) which ranges from its Hon Chairman and Secretary to its key staff, follows on from the predecessor HRCP and is deliberately designed, not only to give WBHC exposure to the Hugli Heritage Enterprise Incubator though an official accreditation process, but is also in a phased way to the outcomes that follow it. For example, the IAT expose WBHC to the Masons' and Allied Trades' Centre of Excellence (MAT-CE) and the other five pathways in a cumulative way by inviting different members of the WBHC team to attend see the pathways in action in Chandannagar, Serampore and Barrackpore (with the HEF-U). Following the Serampore Initiative (also one of our partners), the IAT will be only the second overseas funded team to have ever had a partnership with the WBHC and we have done this on the basis of the same strategy employed during the predecessor HRCP..
Sustainability of impact beyond the lifetime of the project
At the end of its twelve months and judging by the impacts' success of the HRCP (see Visual Evidence), this IAT strategy will leverage several times over the total amount of resource requested (£82K) and bring it within the ambit of the state. These pathways can be taken over as they are and scaled up, or their mixed private, third sector blended methodologies (currently unknown in the heritage sector in West Bengal) applied to emerging or unforeseen new heritage challenges in the Hugli Corridor. The challenge with resources in WBl and India is not absolute; there is money in the treasury, but the money that there is needs to be targeted in a way that has been proven to provide results for the future. The IAT provides the state government with this proof and crucially does so in a way that allows WBHC to take ownership of this success. This was not the case with the predecessor outputs of the HRCP which the WBHC welcomed, witnessed and participated in, but did not own. This WBHC co-ownership and people-to-state interface is the core of the IAT's impact. E.g. HHEI blue and green badge guides will be able to charge a premium for their services on account of the WBHC's accreditation. In the future, the first cohort of guides can, with minimum supervisory input from WBHC (or a third sector honest broker) induct other guides into the programme and create a cadre of guides for the region. Similarly for prestige and recruitment reasons, schools in the region are likely to welcome a week-long visit by the Hugli Heritage Hub exhibition trailer. In the same way, though there will be absolutely no pressure for them to do so (for ethical reasons), those benefiting from the H-MWB-P could form a peer support group in sister Hugli cities after the end of the IAT. the CRD-K will clearly be sustained by the Municipality, but its world-class innovative joint experience of historical accurate sensory horticulture and Fine Art History will help Konnagar to transform its national profile and become a key site for visitors from the modern art marketplaces and exhibition centres of Mumbai and New Delhi. The HEF-U is a flexible association that can re-form for commissions. HRCP gave its members their first commission and WBHC or another third party can give the HEF-U their third or fourth after the end of the IAT. The AS-CHTS is a localised trial providing key data for future decisions about heritage in an open access format, but the IAT will present these data formally to WBHC in its final report in conjunction with a premiere of drone footage with the HEF-U's films (see the IAT's Work Plan and DMP in the Attachments)