Chief Minister Pema Khandu on Wednesday announced that all government schools of the state established before independence will be declared as ‘heritage schools’ and will be given special attention for infrastructure development, along with a museum within the premises. This is a welcome announcement. These schools are unique as they were established mostly by the British government who was ruling India at that time. Their infrastructure looks very different and has a touch of British era engineering. Many of these buildings are decaying and are on the verge of completely getting destroyed.
Instead of removing them and constructing new buildings, the government should try to restore them. Not only schools, there are several government infrastructures which were constructed during the British era. They should be identified and some of them should be preserved by giving them heritage tags. The state government should conduct a proper survey of the infrastructure created during the British. Those that can be restored and preserved should be taken up on priority. This announcement of the CM to declare all schools established before independence as heritage schools is a good beginning and hopefully will pave the way for effort to save other pre-independence infrastructures.