Teardrops at the Taj: wicked problems of World Heritage preservation, pollution and politics

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines how monumental preservation at the Taj Mahal leveraged the broader goals of national and international agencies including UNESCO and other UN bodies, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to address the wicked problems of pollution, pro-poor tourism, and sustainable development. I suggest that the Taj, and more specifically its future preservation, is bound up in a set of conflictual connectivities and centrifugal forces that far exceed normative heritage and conservation practice. Thus the Mughal tomb became ‘the critical receptor’ and nodal site for an onslaught of international technical, economic, developmental and conservation schemes attempting to link cultural conservation with environmental concerns, in concert with social and economic uplift, well-being and urban resilience. What remains after decades of foreign studies, consultancies, technical reports, preservation monitoring and novel technologies? And how might we disentangle those wicked problems encircling monumental preservation in an era of environmental and political toxicity.