Earlier this week, the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) launched a website listing heritage sites in Fort Kochi and Mattancherry. The initiative, part of the Kochi Heritage Mapping Project, gives visitors a cursory glimpse into the rich, centuries-old history of the twin towns.
Two hundred heritage sites have been mapped on the project website, accessed via www.gcdaheritagesitemapping.in. Each is accompanied by a brief historical description, a photo (there are also provisions to add video), GIS coordinates, and ward and village details.
Each site is also linked to a Google Map extension to guide visitors — a handy tool to visit some of the less popular nooks and crannies of this historic city. According to GCDA officials, the tool was designed, in addition to the obvious purpose of creating a ‘digital museum’, to help visitors to the region highlight the locales and plan their trips better.
However, the fact that one can’t link two or more locations in one go and thus form a seamless Google Map route via the website has even the most digital newbies wondering what the point is. Perhaps that would change in future iterations.
Save this hiccup, what bugs many, especially history buffs in the city, is the lack of forethought that has gone into the website’s making. Despite there being no dearth of information concerning the sites, the descriptions that accompany them are sketchy.
Interestingly, save for writer and cultural organiser Bony Thomas, the principal investigator of the project, the rest of its nearly ten-member team comprises town planners of GCDA. “No historians. And this shows,” says a local historian, who prefers not to be named.
A GCDA official tries to justify, saying “the documentation was done in under six months”. However, the project had begun much earlier. In fact, it was included in the 2022-23 budget of GCDA and done in collaboration with the Cochin Heritage Zone Conservation Society (CHZCS), of which Bony is a nodal officer.
A statement released by GCDA in January 2023 stated that over 140 sites were already mapped and that the final website would be made available in February of that year. Sadly not to be. Since then, an addition of 50 sites.
When asked why there was a delay, Bony explains that he was not part of the original project, though the 2023 statement from GCDA carried his quote with the CHZCS designation. In the project’s current avatar, Bony is acting in a personal capacity. “This project has nothing to do with CHZCS. I submitted a proposal to GCDA and they accepted it,” Bony tells TNIE.
Whatever the project’s history, it is no doubt a good first step in identifying several key sites — many of them hidden gems. GCDA officials also say that future editions will look beyond the twin towns. But with a caveat: “This is not a historical record. Only a mapping project.”
Indeed, even now, the website carries a disclaimer that the info may not be accurate.
“So, what exactly is the goal, one might wonder,” says the local historian. “But like in the case of any digital project, this too would have provisions in place to tweak the details and ensure accuracy.”
As for the dearth of information on the website, if one presumes that there would be more information waiting for them at the actual physical site, they couldn’t be more wrong. “It’s been over two decades since we submitted a proposal to see signposts up at historical sites in Fort Kochi and Mattancherry,” laments Sivadathan M P, the director of Kerala Homestay and Tourism Society.
But unbeknownst to Sivadathan, several key sites in Fort Kochi have got sign plates with QR codes, thanks to a collaboration with the GIZ Foundation. “But are they working?” wonders a local resident, David L. “Even most of the locals are unaware of it.”
So, couldn’t this website fill that void and become a ‘digital signpost’ of sorts? “With what information that’s currently up there, likely not,” says former mayor K J Sohan.
“Sure, it is a good start, and surely, more details will soon follow. What should ideally be there is a storyline that ties various sites together, even those outside the peripheries of what we usually associate with heritage and tourism, i.e. Fort Kochi and Mattancherry. After all, history cannot be told from inside a silo.”
Sivadathan insists that more needs to be done on the ground, rather than the digital space. “Tourists have been coming to Kochi since the early 1990s. They came, interacted with the locals, learned, observed and experienced Kochi in its most natural state and left. Only to visit again and numerous times since. Then, there were no digital applications to guide them,” he says.
The only roadblock now is the rapid commercialisation of the region, he adds. “This is why tourists have started to keep away. Not to mention our waste management crisis, dog menace, the lack of public toilets,” Sivadathan explains.
Sohan concurs. He says the website is “only a cosmetic band-aid to a slew of problems that require urgent solutions. GCDA, the planning and development authority of the city, should be more focused on that.”
As to why GCDA took up the digital project remains a mystery to many. “GCDA was set up as a town planning authority. But now, it is not even that. The last masterplan they submitted was in 1991, which extended to 2001 and for some years still. Heritage conservation and related fields were never in their ambit,” says Biley Menon, co-convener of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage - Cochin Chapter.
When posed this question, a GCDA official explains that “since the city’s development is inseparable from its historical legacy, the project does come under its purview.” Also, to prepare a master plan for an area, it has become mandatory to geotag the heritage sites in that particular area, he adds.
But with rumours of the state government introducing a metropolitan planning committee (MPC) to oversee the developmental affairs of a city and its nearby suburbs, it remains to be seen how long GCDA will continue, or whether it will be disbanded.
There are already concerns that the organisation has become redundant with most affairs now being handled at the local body level. Including masterplans. However, the GCDA official says that proposals have been sent to see the organisation absorbed into the MPC.
Well, as said, the website is a good first step, no doubt. With the inclusion of more historians on the project panel, and linkages with agencies such as the Archeological Society of India, it could be a big boon to recent efforts to see Kochi don a Unesco heritage label.