Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 11: Heritage sites are the nucleus parts of a city and their development plans have to be re-cast keeping in view the essentials like traffic circulation, parking spaces, and sanitation and above all to ensure augmentation of the livelihood opportunities of people, said Pramod Kumar Jain, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Culture.
Son of the soil, Pramod Jain, was addressing the special session on 2nd-day of ongoing Workshop and Training on Conservation Techniques, organized by INTACH, Jammu Chapter at university of Jammu, here today.
He said that any site development plans like that of Mubarak Mandi Heritage Complex if implemented without taking in confidence the stakeholders are not going to be successful and sustainable in the long run. It is therefore important that instead of politicians and other vested interests, local people of the surrounding neighborhoods are made to participate while planning and implementing such heritage development and management plan for long term sustainability.
Pramod Jain said that there is dire need for capacity building of local resource persons. He said that Ministry of Culture has many scheme for sending technical persons to foreign countries for training and exposure to latest models, but it is unfortunate that not a single application has been received from Jammu and Kashmir so far. Same is the case regarding Ministry’s scheme for funding the digitization of manuscripts as there are no takers for the scheme from the State, he said.
Other technical sessions on 2nd-day of ongoing Workshop and Training on Conservation Techniques, included a panel discussion on Heritage Assets of Jammu. The panelists were Prof Zahur-ud-Din, former Registrar, JU, Vinod Malhotra, former Development Commissioner Town Planning Organization, J&K and Dr Lalit Gupta, Art Historian. Vinod Malhotra shared with young architects and the audience, the history of the construction of GGM Science College, its English architect, budget, and style etc, gleaned from archival records.
Divya Gupta, Principal Director, Heritage Division, INTACH, New Delhi, gave a detailed presentation on documentation of Heritage sites and buildings. It was followed by paper on Landscape Areas-Heritage Complexes by Aditya Prakash, Director Schools of Architecture and Landscape, SMVD University and Prof R J Vasavada’s talk on First Aid to Historic Buildings after a disaster.
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