JAIPUR: The most revered member of Rajasthan’s aristocracy, Rajmata Gayatri Devi, left her mansion last week to sit on a stretch of pavement alongside slum dwellers in a protest against developers who are changing the skyline of the historic pink city of Jaipur.

It was a startling gesture from the reclusive Queen Mother of the royal family, but her action echoed mounting anger among Indian conservationists at the damage being caused by builders and property barons to one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions.

Sweeping her maroon silk sari beneath her, Devi, 88, sat alongside the city’s most impoverished residents for half an hour on Wednesday, marking her opposition to the ‘land mafia’ who were planning ‘unauthorised construction’ at the foot of her stone palace, the Moti Doongri hill-top fort, in an area officially designated as a public park for the city’s residents.

As Jaipur grows richer on the back of India’s economic boom, a recent burst of new building work is rapidly altering the city’s character. Meanwhile the rapid process of urbanisation has left Rajasthan’s state capital exploding at the seams, as thousands of struggling agricultural workers abandon the barren desert areas nearby in search of employment in the city.

Founded in 1726, Jaipur is famous for its profusion of palaces and forts and its walled city, a medieval labyrinth of bazaars and ancient private mansions. Although major landmarks have benefited from recent restoration programmes, conservation experts are concerned that the rest of the historic city is drowning beneath new, often illegal, construction work. In the Seventies, Jaipur had no more than around 300,000 residents. Today there are an estimated four million, and the city has grown over the same period from a compact five-mile-wide settlement, to a traffic-congested 25-mile-wide sprawl.

“If this goes on at this pace, in this manner we will have nothing left to boast about in 50 years from now. It will be an absolutely permanent loss,” said an official in Rajasthan’s culture ministry, who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The emerging shells of tall buildings are visible throughout the city, next to hoardings promising ‘premium lifestyle apartments’ and ‘21st-century living’. Several huge malls have appeared in the city centre. Elsewhere, radical alterations are being made to the ancient buildings of the walled city, as residents try to stretch the accommodation to fit the fast-expanding population.

Faith Singh, founder of the Jaipur Virasat Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of the city’s heritage, said corruption among local officials, a lack of clear regulations governing construction and the short-term priorities of politicians were conspiring to cause irreversible damage.

“We are building like there’s no tomorrow. The odds are stacked against conservation,’” she warned.

She said that the pleasure for tourists visiting Jaipur was gradually being impaired. “We’ve lost a lot of the skyline. Where before you could have seen beautiful palaces and forts, now, in places, high-rise buildings and shopping have obscured them,” she said.

“People put up a tent, and before you can stop it, there’s a complete building there,” Devi’s biographer Dharmendar Kanwar said. “Let’s not mess up the Jaipur that attracts people from all over the world. Tourists come to see the historical city, not the shopping malls.”

India’s culture minister, Ambika Soni, admitted last year that at least 35 of the country’s protected monuments had simply disappeared without trace, swallowed up by rapid urbanisation and development.

“For every year that goes past we lose more,’” Faith Singh said. “It’s the question of the moment: Will we be left with any reminders of our identity? Or will we be asking, as we finish this process of modernisation, ‘Oops, what happened to our heritage?’”—Dawn/Observer News Service