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The city’s heritage buildings in the Tamil and French quarters are fast vanishing and mindlessly renovated by owners making way for multi-storey buildings. In 1995, a broad study by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) had declared 1,807 buildings in the Boulevard as heritage structures.
In 2005, the list was down to 1,173 buildings. In 2008, a total of 1,184 buildings were declared as heritage structures after a few more were added in the list. In 2010, after bringing the listing classification in line with the National practices as per the recommendations of the Ministry of Urban Development, as many as 980 buildings were classified as heritage buildings in Grade-IA, Grade-IIA, Grade-IIB and Grade-III in order of importance. The number of buildings listed as heritage structures had now come down by almost 50 per cent in past 20 years.
According to the INTACH project report, “in the past decade some positive steps by the government and concerned NGOs has led to a number of heritage preservation initiatives that included restoration of many private and government buildings. However, there is still a long way to go if we have to qualify for International standards like qualify(ing) for UNESCO World Heritage listing.”
According to an INTACH official, on the one hand the government is trying to promote Puducherry’s rich heritage in its tourism campaigns while, on the other hand, the number of heritage buildings are going down.
Several heritage buildings in the Tamil quarter have been demolished, and apartments are coming up in the French quarter. If this trend continues the tourism sector will be badly affected. Almost 40 to 50 per cent of foreign tourists visit the city for its heritage.
One option is the government could declare an area as a heritage precinct. Cities like Hyderabad, Mumbai and Ahmedabad have successfully developed heritage precincts.
