Although this infamous project, which seemed a thinly disguised ploy to line the pockets of state politicians and bureaucrats, bit the dust, other threats keep surfacing. The most recent was the decision to permit a yoga guru named Vikram Choudhury to hold impromptu classes on the main platform of the monument! He even allowed his students to rest against the delicate lattice screens after sessions. This led to a fracas between the UP government, led by Mulayam Singh, and the central government, which was in the dock on this occasion. In a similar incident only a few months ago, the Archaeological Survey of India, or ASI, inexplicably gave permission for a Jackie Chan film to be shot near a temple in the Hampi complex in south India, and this had to be overruled. The central government has maintained a curious silence over this unpardonable lapse of security.

Some months ago, there was a dispute between the state and central government over the 350th anniversary celebrations of the Taj Mahal. This time, the central government stayed aloof, reportedly because of a disagreement over the arrangements for the festivities. The ASI has been guilty of an “on-off” stance—for security reasons—on permitting tourists to visit the monument on moonlit nights. Surely it would be well within the capacity of any organization to frisk visitors on such occasions, as is the practice at airports. Such an extra-cautious attitude actually works to the detriment of the preservation of the monument, because it deters visitors from spending more time in Agra for this precise purpose. One has only to recall the words of Mary Sleeman, wife of the redoubtable colonel who took on thuggee in Rajasthan in the 18th century, who, after visiting the Taj, wrote to a friend in England that she would happily die to have such an edifice built in her memory!

Very recently, the ASI’s chief, C.Babu Rajeev, confirmed that the minarets of the Taj are tilting, which was known six decades ago, but, some reports allege, had been suppressed. During the British Raj, the Advisory Committee on the Restoration and Conservation of the Taj Mahal at Agra reported in 1941 that the plinth levels were different and submitted 25 drawings to this effect. Two noted historians have now warned that the bed of the Yamuna River ought to be refilled with water if the monument is to be saved. According to a former head of Rajasthan University’s history department, the river forms an integral part of the Taj’s design. Indeed, “Mayawati’s folly,” fortunately stopped halfway through, may have already spelled the death knell for the Taj by altering the flow of the river, although the state government has sought to remove the reclamation along the riverbank.

Historical records show that the Yamuna River was full of water and extensively used for transport. Even Shah Jahan’s body was brought to the Taj from Fort Agra in a boat. Last October, Mulayam Singh constituted a committee of experts to examine the causes of the tilt. One only hopes that this report doesn’t go the way of so many documents and merely gather dust in some decrepit office, as indeed was the fate of the 1941 report, which this writer had access to three decades ago.

Politicking is a major problem when it comes to projects that imperil the preservation of archaeological sites. Mayawati is now trying to implicate the former national coalition government for staging a witch-hunt against her in the Taj Corridor case.

Considering that India receives only 3.5 million visitors a year—a third of what Thailand does—when it has arguably the largest and most diverse number of historical and natural sites in the world, every effort ought to be taken to ensure their protection. The new tourism minister, Renuka Chowdhry, has vowed to do as much, armed with the Sanskrit slogan that every visitor ought to be treated as a king. With Thailand facing the repercussions of the tsunami, it is just possible that India will receive many more tourists in the next few months if travelers switch to this part of Asia instead.

While India’s sites can match the best in the world, the infrastructure is one of the poorest. Mayawati and her cohorts certainly had a point when they made a case for connecting the various monuments scattered around Agra, but the corridor was a hare-brained way of putting this into practice. Transport is a major bottleneck, and if the situation around the Taj is bad—just a few hours away from the national capital—the environment around other sites can well be imagined. In the Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra in western India—which some experts believe mark the highest point of Indian culture as the art depicted in it has never been surpassed in its grandeur anywhere else in the county—this problem has now been solved by halting all vehicles some distance away from the hillside and conveying visitors to the base by electric buses.

Crowd management is another sore point. This writer recalls visiting the Taj early one morning some 15 years ago. The attendant had lit a few sticks of incense and placed them on a stand atop the marble tomb in the mausoleum, sprinkling some notes and coins around it in the hope of attracting offerings from the faithful. Our group confiscated this sum—which amounted to $5 within half an hour of the monument throwing open its doors—and scolded the attendant for threatening to discolor the ageing marble-clad edifice.

At Ajanta, crowds make a beeline for the two or three caves where the wall paintings are somewhat intact. Walter Spink, formerly from the University of Michigan, who is the world’s foremost “Ajantologist” and has been studying the caves for 40 years, has proposed a simple scheme to restrict entry to different caves by colored tickets, but this has fallen on deaf ears for many years.

One only hopes that Chowdhry, who is known to be excessively enthusiastic on occasion, doesn’t overdo the access to monuments simply in order to boost the tourism figures. Ultimately, if India succumbs to the greed for earning that extra dollar, it might harm the monuments irretrievably—and that would throttle the tourist trade.