While the loss of The Mairie has revitalised the conservation debate among guardians of heritage, sharp dissonance persists among the stakeholders tasked with the conservation mandate.
Significantly, this divergence is fundamental in nature, sometimes looming as a traditional building-modern engineering face-off, and it ranges from who should declare a structure unsafe and on the basis of which determinants, whether conservation initiatives should also target private buildings of vintage and the construction materials to be used.
A case in point is a “lack of eye contact” between The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and the PWD on the material to use in rebuilding. While the PWD is known to favour Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC) and cement mortar and cement plaster, INTACH would rather go with Lime mortar and Madras–Terrace Roof technique. INTACH experts point out that structures built in the traditional way have a much longer life. In contrast, the buildings built with so-called modern technique using RCC just 35-40 years ago are already in dilapidation.
The proponents of modern techniques and materials argue that good quality lime for traditional construction is not available anymore while flagbearers of the traditional way say the raw material required for lime or cement is good quality Limestone.
“For mortars and lime-terracing, we have been using locally available hydraulic lime with regular random sampling to ensure quality. For plastering and renders, we have been using food-grade non-hydraulic lime available from the same suppliers who supply it to the sugar industry,” says A. K. Das of INTACH.
INTACH suggests evolving a consensus based on hard engineering study conducted by academic professionals like National Centre for Safety of Heritage Structures (IIT-M) together with Archaeological Survey of India with inputs from PWD and INTACH and from anybody else having any knowledge in the matter.
