National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana

Background

India is endowed with rich and diverse natural, historic and cultural resources. It is a palette of different cultures, religions, traditions, home of various forms of art & handicrafts, music and literature, architectural styles et al. However, it is yet to explore the full potential of such resources to its full advantages.

The Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, launched the Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY) scheme, with a focus on holistic development of heritage cities. The scheme aims to preserve and revitalise soul of the heritage city to reflect the city’s unique character by encouraging aesthetically appealing, accessible, informative & secured environment.

Issues in maintenance of heritage sites

Heritage areas are neglected, overcrowded with inadequate basic services and infrastructure, such as water supply, sanitation, roads, etc. Basic amenities like toilets, signages, street lights are missing. Multiple institutions and unclear regulatory framework for financing and managing urban heritage assets and landscapes, as well as weak capacity of Urban Local Bodies have created major challenges for managing these heritage cities.

Scheme Statement

“Preserve and revitalise soul of the heritage city to reflect the city’s unique character by encouraging aesthetically appealing, accessible, informative & secured environment. To undertake strategic and planned development of heritage cities aiming at improvement in overall quality of life with specific focus on sanitation, security, tourism, heritage revitalization and livelihoods retaining the city’s cultural identity.”

Scheme Objectives

The main objective of HRIDAY is to preserve character of the soul of heritage city and facilitate inclusive heritage linked urban development by exploring various avenues including involving private sector. Specific objectives are:

• Planning, development and implementation of heritage sensitive infrastructure.
• Service delivery and infrastructure provisioning in historic city core areas.
• Preserve and revitalize heritage wherein tourists can connect directly with city’s unique character.
• Develop and document a heritage asset inventory of cities – natural, cultural, living and built heritage as a basis for urban planning, growth and service provision & delivery.
• Implementation and enhancement of basic services delivery with focus on sanitation services like public conveniences, toilets, water taps, street lights with use of latest technologies in improving tourist facilities/amenities.
• Local capacity enhancement for inclusive heritage-based industry.
• Create effective linkages between tourism and cultural facilities and also the conservation of natural and built heritage.
• Urban heritage adaptive rehabilitation and maintenance, including appropriate technologies for historic buildings retrofitting.
• Establish and manage effective public private partnership for adaptive urban rehabilitation.
• Development and promotion of core tangible economic activities to enhance avenues of livelihoods amongst stakeholders. This would also include necessary skill development amongst them including making public spaces accessible and developing cultural spaces.
• Making cities informative with use of modern ICT tools and making cities secure with modern surveillance and security apparatus like CCTV etc.
• Increase accessibility i.e. physical access (roads as well as universal design) and intellectual access (i.e. digital heritage and GIS mapping of historical locations/ tourist maps and routes).

Duration and funding

HRIDAY is a central sector scheme, where 100% funding will be provided by Government of India. The duration of this scheme is for the period December 2014 to March 2019. The scheme would be implemented in a mission mode. The total outlay for the scheme is INR 500 Crore.

HRIDAY cities

• Ajmer, Rajasthan
• Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh
• Amritsar, Punjab
• Badami, Karnataka
• Dwaraka, Gujarat
• Gaya, Bihar
• Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu
• Mathura
• Puri, Odisha
• Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
• Velankanni, Tamil Nadu
• Warangal, Telangana

Source: HRIDAY portal