Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is responsible to maintenance of all nationally protected monuments of which there are 174 in Delhi itself. ASI is responsible for upkeep and safety of all these protected monuments. But the task is clearly gigantic for an obsolete and moribund IAS babu headed organisation. It has no drive or modern expertise of monument/heritage management. it is a truly redundant organisation which has not moved to acquire latest in the field. The modern monument/heritage management is not just replacing the broken column or missing brick, it involves lots of modern principles of management, creating a social space for the monuments, preserving it for the posterity and foster better understanding about each of them.
Just look around and you will notice that ASI has failed in all of them. It has some very nice and competent people on the roll but the some cultural czars (read powerful NGOs) and IAS head of ASI do not allow them to work scientifically. The result is unprofessional handling of the monuments and visiting public.
The bane of ASI has always been that the non technical IAS officer is the head who knows little or nothing about history or preservation. A rank outsider and a burra sahib, he is more interested in maintaining his trappings of babudom like car, peon and alibi to stay put in Delhi till he gets an office with nuisance. The person has no love for monuments, no idea of preservation and has never done public management. his idea of protection is placing of ugly poses of CISF men with automatic assault rifles at monuments like Taj and Red Fort, Delhi. One such IAS boss of ASI had hilariously identified a gold star found at Meerut as that belonging to Harappan age! more than that the IAS head stiffles growth, inhibits scientific ideas and promotes groupism. The ASI should always be headed by a technical man or may be a person with management exposure.
Now look at Delhi's Red Fort for maintenance standards. To me it looked horrendous. removing marbles they have whitewashed the monuments, there are soot every where, most part of monuments are not open for closer viewing, and you can see the gun toting CISF men all over. Is it a safe house shown so typically in Hindi films with a gun man on every inch? Do they inspire confidence?
Worst why should ASI be allowed to tarnish and abuse the monuments with fake maintenance? Why cant they just learn from some agency how to maintain an ancient monument? It is blasphemous to say the least. To a person who loves the medieval Indian history it is a matter of shame that the way it has been maintained and showed to unsuspecting people. I don't know whether it is under pressure of babus or NGOs or sheer inefficiency of the ASI but whatever be the reason it is horrendous to say the least. I have photographs of Red fort which shows the horrendous restoration work undertaken by the ASI at this World Heritage monument. what if UNESCO actually sees them? God forbid!
