INDIA: A £30 million project to build a complex of shopping malls, restaurants, a boat club and open-air entertainment spots adjoining the Taj Mahal is threatening the 17th-century white marble monument to love by exposing it to possible monsoon flooding over the next few weeks.
The local Uttar Pradesh government began narrowing the course of the Jamuna river, adjoining the magnificent monument at Agra, 125 miles south-east of New Delhi last November, increasing its chances of overflowing into the 350-year old mausoleum, barely 200 yards away, when it swells during the monsoon rains which are in full flow over the region.
Although the federal government halted all construction activity in the controversial "Taj Heritage Corridor" project on June 19th, following media reports and protests by conservationists, experts said eight months of building work had led to about 5,500 ft of the Jamuna being "constricted" with sand banks and sandstone walls.
"The building work can contain the water flow and cause flooding of the Taj's environs," said D. Dayanand of the Archeological Survey of India, responsible for preserving the monument.
Contractors at the building site said swirling flood waters, carrying construction material like sand and red sandstone that is piled high nearby, could also damage the Taj whose marble is already discoloured by noxious fumes emitted by Agra's numerous factories and by toxic diesel fumes from thousands of power generators in the overcrowded city.
Waterlogging of the Taj's surrounding low-lying gardens, last flooded in the 1970s, could weaken the monument's foundations. "If not removed, the sand could flow downstream once the volume of water rises, forming a dam that could ultimately endanger the Taj," contractor Kishen Singh Yadav said.
The local state government cleared plans last year to build a five-mile mile long concrete walkway linking the Taj Mahal to five other important historical sites in the former Mughal capital. It was to provide tourists easy access to these sites without negotiating Agra's narrow, dirty and traffic-choked streets to reach them.
Official sources said some of the additional facilities and buildings planned along this walkway to boost tourist earnings would block the view of the mausoleum most favoured by its builder, emperor Shah Jehan, from his bedroom in the nearby Red Fort across the Jamuna from the Taj.
The effete Mughal ruler built the Taj, which daily attracts thousands of visitors, in memory of his ravishing wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died at a young age giving birth to their 14th child in 1631. It was completed in 1648 and, according to local folklore, the emperor blinded its architect to prevent him from reproducing the majestic sarcophagus elsewhere.
The state-owned National Project Construction Corporation began laying the foundation of the Taj walkway last November. It had spent £5.6 million or about a quarter of the total amount sanctioned for the questionable project in the first phase until federal tourism minister Jagmohan halted all work on June 19th.
Thereafter, nobody either in the state or the federal administration was willing to take responsibility for clearing the project with the result that l'affaire Taj has now become a major row between rival political parties.
The state's chief minister, Ms Mayawati, whose administration cleared the proposal in her annual budget last August, has professed ignorance about the project and ordered an inquiry into the matter. According to one senior official, the officers responsible for initiating the project are now the ones investigating it.
Reactions in Agra to the controversial project are mixed. While some believe that its completion would economically benefit them, others fear it would ruin the very monument that symbolises and sustains the city.
"It [building work\] would diminish, not add to the Taj's charm," 18-year old Samir Qureshi said. It must be stopped at all costs and the money earmarked for it spent on improving the impoverished city, he added.