Agra mayhem: A blot on the Taj brand name

This is not the concern of Agra residents alone, India's tourism and travel industry as a whole should sit up and take notice. What happened a week ago in parts of Agra - virtually leading to the closure of the world famous Taj Mahal for the first time, though mandarins in the state government kept denying it - is a national shame.

That a small group of rioters, provoked by a law and order problem arising out of a road accident on Aug 28, could hold the whole city to ransom and disrupt the functioning of civil society for seven long, agonising hours in the heart of the city, in full view of TV cameras with anchors giving cricket-like commentary, is a grim testimony to the failure of the police and administrative machinery.

The full dimensions and implications of those seven hours of breakdown are now becoming clearer. The Agra district magistrate himself had to seek shelter in a dingy room in the Nai Ki Mandi police station to save his skin from the rioters. Senior police officials privately confess that the armed constabulary ignored their orders to charge. What could be more damning than the fact that police goaded people to throw stones at rampaging rioters.

The security services and the administration should have shown maturity and sensitivity in dealing with a situation of this sort. The city of the Taj Mahal is a brand name and a national icon of tourism, drawing the maximum number of visitors from all over the world, sustaining billions of dollars worth of a smokeless industry. But the rather cold and indifferent manner in which the central government has responded to the events in Agra has left the tourism industry here bewildered and shocked.

"Why nobody has been taken to task for disrupting tourism and closing the Taj Mahal even for a brief while - a fact that the international media has immediately highlighted - needs to be seriously investigated. Reports of tourists being pushed out or not being allowed to see the Taj Mahal even after the purchase of tickets are too discomforting. The overreaction of security personnel at the Taj Mahal to what happened in the city could have been dispensed with had the authorities been more vigilant," said Surendra Sharma, former president of the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Agra.

Earlier, even in times of curfew, the Taj, which draws around 12,000 people every day, has never been closed.

Seven hours of rioting and mayhem virtually turned into a setback of seven weeks for Agra's tourism sector, with a host of cancellations. With 20 trucks destroyed, damage to property is being estimated at Rs.70 million.

Around 7,000 trucks and lorries to and from southern India were held up on the Agra borders and with Monday being the seventh day of curfew, the uncertainty continues.

For years, people in Agra have been demanding an alternative to the arterial MG Road, but work on the southern by-pass to link Gwalior Road with the Delhi-Agra highway has been hanging fire for want of resources. The Supreme Court of India had directed in 1996 that the work should be taken up on a priority basis, but the state and central agencies have been dragging their feet or perhaps waiting for some more incidents of communal carnage.

Each day, thousands of trucks and lorries pass through the city on their way to the south, west and east. The road traffic has increased several fold but the infrastructure has not expanded according to the growing needs, putting additional pressure on the city's lifeline, points out social activist Rajan Kishore.

"Had there been an alternative to MG Road, this incident would not have
happened," he adds.

Because of the importance of tourism, industrial chambers and associations in the city have demanded upgradation of the existing Kheria airport to reduce the dependence on road transport and a separate body to administer  areas around the historical monuments. Many in fact want Agra to be made a union territory for the safety of its monuments and to modernise the city that is home to three heritage structures and has two more in the pipeline.

The billion-dollar question however remains: Have the governing politicians in Lucknow and New Delhi drawn any lessons from the orgy of violence and mayhem let loose in Agra seven days ago? Will they spell out the strategies worked out to insulate the city of the Taj Mahal from such violent incidents in future? Perhaps not.