Termed as the “Taj Mahal of Goa” by Art and Culture Minister, Govind Gaude, Goa’s premiere art and culture centre, Kala Academy’s cup of woes is overflowing.
On July 17 last year, a huge portion of the structure of an open-air auditorium at the Kala Academy had collapsed raising serious questions over the quality of work being put into renovating the iconic Kala Academy building.
A part of the newly renovated false ceiling of the Kala Academy built on the “Shahjahan model” came crashing down in April this year due to water leakage, raising a volley of questions on the quality of work.
Tiatrists complained of poor acoustics and lighting, which according to them are adversely affecting the live performances. A plethora of issues are affecting this prominent art and culture venue.
Under fire from all quarters, the State government was forced to constitute a 13-member task force committee, chaired by a veteran theatre artiste Vijay Kenkre, to review the status of infrastructure work at the Kala Academy. The committee is also supposed to provide recommendations for improvement and upgradation of the iconic structure, which has been mired in controversy since the renovation began.
The Task Force held its first meeting on October 22 at the Entertainment Society of Goa hall and discussed its observations made during an inspection visit to the art and culture centre. Following the inspection, the Task Force chairman expressed his displeasure at the quality of renovation work done at Kala Academy.
This development comes ahead of the International Film Festival of India, scheduled in November when the premises will be used for film screenings, talk shows, exhibitions and other related events.
Kenkre said that he wasn’t satisfied and the work wouldn’t be given even a passing percentage. He went on to add that a lot of work was required to be done. He listed out several problems like the air conditioner leakage, issues with the sound and acoustics, amongst a host of other deficiencies.
This is not all. The Charles Correa Foundation, which is part of the Task Force Committee, has decided not to take part in it because it feels in its wisdom that a detailed structural audit of the entire process needs to be done and what is being done currently would seem to be just a superficial response to the real needs of artistes.
Kala Academy, as we repeatedly say, is not just an institution. It is an intrinsic part of Goan heritage and culture and not just a soulless institution of brick and mortar. It’s got a heart which beats very rapidly and it is an institution which is all about people and sentiments.
When asked why the Foundation felt that the Vijay Kenkre-led Kala Academy Task Force will not serve the purpose of what the sentiments are and the “mess” that Kala Academy is in now, Arminio Ribeiro, Consulting Architect, Charles Correa Foundation, said, “The main issue that we face today is that the building is near completion or completed, we don’t know how they’ve defined the current position of Kala Academy and we’ve not seen the process of rehabilitation of the building, which is the structural part of the Academy.”
“What does that mean? Till some time back, we were wanting to step in and tell them that okay you need to correct this, you need to correct that. They are doing superficial things right now. Today we have reached a point where suddenly we found that a portion of Kala Academy had collapsed. They said that this was not part of the project, but I don’t even understand why it was not part of the project, because if the consultants were involved, they should have analysed every part of Kala Academy,” Ribeiro said.
“Then we heard that the ceiling had collapsed in some areas. All these things have got their own concerns and fundamentally, the concern is safety of the people inside Kala Academy. If tomorrow even a false ceiling collapses weighing some 15 or 20 kg that will result in injuries. God forbid if a slab comes down in some section, it can result in deaths,” he added.
The day the slab collapsed of the amphitheatre fell, apparently there were some people who had gone there and they stepped away from the place for some work.
“The thing is, workers were over there and fortunately nobody got injured,” he said.
Now the question arises, will this reluctance or decision not to participate or provide assistance and consultancy to the Kala Academy Task Force, affect the artistes’ confidence, who till now thought that the Charles Correa Foundation was with them?
“We completely want to be with the artistes. What we are seeking right now is to get a structural audit done and then we will consider whether we want to step in or not. I think without a structural audit at this point, doing anything won’t be possible because it is not just about confidence, it is about safety of lives. I think this is of primary concern for us,” Ribeiro said.
The Charles Correa Foundation has said it will only accept the consultancy service pro bono if the audit was carried out by IIT Madras. But why only IIT Madras?
“From the beginning, we have been working with IIT Madras. Professor Arun Menon (Professor of Structural Engineering at IIT Madras), is an expert in rehabilitation of weakened concrete RCC structures and with him was also another expert in structural engineering, Radha Krishna Pillai. These people have the right kind of expertise to appreciate both - the rehabilitation of these buildings and also respond to architecturally sensitive matters,” he said.
When Devidas Amonkar, theatre artiste and member of the Kala Academy Task Force, was asked about his experience as far as the first meeting was concerned and whether the response of the State government to constitute this Task Force was for real or just a time wasting tactic, he said that the artistes actually thanked Chief Minister Pramod Sawant for accepting that there are some flaws in the reconstruction work.
“In fact, we demanded that Charles Correa Foundation should be there in the meetings with the Chief Minister. Right now, we should hope for better things. Being artistes, we want our Kala Academy in the same position as it was before the renovation work. It is our cultural heritage and it has given birth to so many artistes. That has stopped totally for last more than four years,” Amonkar said.
According to Amonkar, that’s why the artistes never interfered before.
“We had gone for inspection. We noted the flaws, and let me clear first that we are not here as Task Force members, we are representing the artistes’ collective, Kala Rakhonn Maand,” he said.
Speaking about the Task Force and whether there is any light at the end of the tunnel, Francis Coelho, theatrical production specialist, said, “We chased the CM and asked for a meeting. At that meeting, we demanded an inquiry into the entire matter. Our demands were accepted and we are grateful to Pramod Sawant for accepting our demands. He promptly formed the Task Force,” he said.
“Every Task Force has certain objectives or what we call terms of reference. They have a certain amount of work cut out for them. So we were happy that the government brought an outsider. We were demanding a former high court judge or a Supreme Court judge or someone not from the government. What the CM did was he got Vijay Kenkre, who’s a very senior and honest gentleman and we are happy with him. So far the Task Force has done some really good work,” Coelho added.
“A proper inspection happened. As far as I am concerned, my responsibility was to show Vijay Kenkre and other members of the Task Force, the technical aspects of what has gone wrong with the air conditioning, with the sound and the lights. The complete AC system that was existing, has been ignored. The ducts remain as they are and they’ve added a new system on the terrace, which is not meant for auditoriums,” he said.
“We have been shouting hoarse about the deficiencies in the renovation work. I’ve been pointing out these exact problems related with the AC, sound system, waterproofing and that’s why I said, we’ve been hounding the Chief Minister for a meeting. He met us and acknowledged that there were lapses with everything in Kala Academy. Because of those lapses, he asked what we want to do now. That’s the reason he’s put together the Task Force. He’s put an outsider as head of the Task Force to dwell into what went wrong and as a Task Force, we are doing that,” he said.
“I’ve taken press conference on the issue and articulated every aspect in detail. The same issues were showed to the entire committee of the Task Force along with the chairman. In fact, some of the members, who were elderly gentlemen, took the trouble to literally climb up the small crevices and corners of the complex,” he said.
What is interesting is, immediately after the Task Force held a press conference, after that the Art and Culture Minister, Govind Gaude completely ditched the Task Force, saying how it could come up with these kind of flaws just after meeting. So, on one hand you are saying that the Chief Minister admitted to these kind of flaws, but the Art and Culture Minister immediately turned around and said how could this Task Force even come up with the these kind of conclusions so soon.
“I think that statement of his was completely immature, because he has not seen the kind of work that we’ve done in that two days. We spent a good four or five hours in that complex. We didn’t just walk around aimlessly,” Coelho said.
He added that the Task Force members spent a lot of time and the next day they had almost a 4-hour long meeting, which ended at lunchtime, where they presented facts and figures to all the stakeholders involved, which included the Kala Academy Council, the Member Secretary, the PWD, people from the Art and Culture department and others. “They didn’t have answers to what the entire committee was asking. Now, the Chairman is an outsider to this entire story. He made the remarks on the basis of whatever he saw those two days. He was shocked and aghast with what he observed. Thus he made the statement,” he said.
“That statement vindicated what we have been saying and like you know, put the onus on to the Task Force to verify what we were saying, which he did,” the theatrical production specialist, said.
During the Monsoon session of the Assembly, Govind Gaude assured that no work would be left incomplete. However he pointed out that even the Charles Correa Foundation and its team were not able to provide solutions to the problems of Kala Academy, which has been built on sand dunes and just 2.5m away from the high tide line.
Reacting to this remark by the Art and Culture Minister, Ribeiro said that he wasn’t aware of the whole background of sand dune issue.
“The fact is that Kala Academy was designed by Charles Correa in the position of an architect. Engineering support and project management was given by the CPWD. Charles Correa had nothing to with that. Even at that point of time, the indoor auditorium was below the mean sea level. So it had to be taken into account. The fact that there would be subsoil water trying to find its way up the building, should have been considered,” he said.
According to him, there was this attempt because there were sumps built inside the Kala Academy flow.
“Now what seems to have happened in the course of construction is that, there was some flaw in the construction of the foundation and the raft slab that was built over there. That started the early leakages. The bigger problem was that, a lot of these things were left unattended because there were multiple events happening, for which the Kala Academy had to be ready most of the time,” the Consulting Architect at Charles Correa Foundation, said.
Due to this, the leakage was not just from the subsoil water, it was also from the roof and from all other locations.
“Kala Academy was left neglected from the time it was built, to the time when it was renovated in 2004 and till date. Even today, the rehabilitation work that has been done is shoddy and substandard. We don’t know what else we are going to find. What they can respond to is what they can hear and see. What we would like to react to is the unseen, which is the rehabilitation that has been done for the structure. So we simply ask them, you do a proper audit of the structure. Show it to us that this structure is going to be safe for people to occupy, especially because it’s a public building. Then we will be willing to participate,” he asserted.
The matter of fact is Kala Academy needs a financial, structural and cultural audit to the satisfaction of the people, who are the real family members of this institution. The point here is that if you spend about Rs 70 to 80 crore and then you end up having to constitute a Task Force and do these kind of audits, this actually spells out and underlines a very sorry state of affairs.
At the end of the day, this was just a renovation exercise of one of the greatest iconic buildings that Goa ever had. We say this with sadness because the same sadness that was there four months ago, when we discussed this subject, remains the same. In fact, it goes even deeper because nothing seems to have moved and that is a sad story.
It’s very important that as Goans, we need to understand where our money went, along with all other reasons that have been put forward. One hopes that Kala Academy will finally get restored to its former glory.