Museum of Man in focus after CBI raid

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL, AUG. 25. The Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS), also known as the National Museum of Man, here has come under sharp focus after a CBI ``raid'' which resulted in the confiscation of some documents and official records from the premises of this Central Government-administered institution.

The CBI swung into action on the basis of a complaint and confiscated documents and files relating to massive procurement of soil by the IGRMS from the State-run Bhoj Wetland Project.

Preliminary reports indicate the CBI might also probe a complaint regarding some missing artefacts from the Museum as well as the long delay in construction of the indoor museum building resulting in massive cost escalation of this project.

Till a few years ago, to be precise until 1994, the IGRMS was functioning only as a museum of huts representing the habitat of different indegenous tribal communities. However in the last few years, it has gradually been transformed into an ecology-oriented museum depicting rivers, deserts, community- based plantations as well as forest management and medicinal practices of different communities.

In the recent past there has been a massive exercise to cover vast stretches of rocky terrain inside the museum premises with plantation to improve the micro-climatic region. This area, which now forms the IGRMS premises, was once a fresh water channel but over the last few centuries it had got converted into an arid zone.

It is learnt that the IGRMS management, with the consent of its executive committee, took the decision to restore the soil cover as part of infrastructural input for building the outdoor museum of communities with the objective of depicting the human relationship with green cover. For meeting this target, an exercise was launched by IGRMS to involve different communities in building a museum of communities and not objects. This, aimed at recollecting tradition, was also backed by instructions from Union Environment Ministry for greening open spaces as well instructions from the Government of India's Department of Culture to restrict the task within the existing budget.

The IGRMS, however, managed to procure soil from the Bhoj Wetland Project. The procurement of this, acquired through the dredging of the Upper Lake, involved only the payment of the transportation cost to the BWP.

The soil is now richly covered with ethno-medical and ethno- botanical plantation representing the ecology map of India as well as sacred groves on the basis of a concrete plan worked out through numerous workshops and meetings of experts and tribal communities represented by tribes like Mawbukhar of Meghalaya, Sarpa Kavu of Kerala, Kovil Kavu of Tamil Nadu, Sarna of Chattisgarh and others.

The IGRMS sources said the CBI raid comes at a time when the process was already on and action was being taken against those who were responsible for the missing artefacts. Till 1994 there was no systematic documentation or physical verification of artefacts. It was only in recent years under the present management that a firm initiative had been taken to prepare the data sheet of artefacts backed with photographs and computer entry of data. Action has also been taken against officers who had withheld the artefacts without proper authority.

The indoor museum project has got delayed after the Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta had detected financial irregularities in the project that had been entrusted to the Capital Project Administration of the State Housing and Environment Department. The project was subsequently transferred to the Indian Railway Construction Company (IRCON).

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