Moving beyond the objectives of conservation, today's heritage profession aims for heritage management. The management approach reminds professionals and host communities to consider sustainability of heritage in economic, environmental and socio-cultural frameworks. Integration of tourism within heritage management frameworks can provide economic incentives for managing heritage sites and activities, whereas well managed and interpreted heritage resources can be popular destinations for tourism. However, there might be other unwanted and unforeseen consequences of these practices. While providing an economic support for heritage management, the economic attraction may entice exploitation of heritage resources, including over-use, theft and vandalism. Over-marketing of heritage resources may trigger promotion of cheap mimicries of heritage manifestations and values. Such consequences and discussion often revolve around the notion of authenticity-one of the muchtalked about and widely used terminologies in both heritage management and tourism. The notion of authenticity may have different meanings for different contexts, resulting in a mismatch of perceptions of what and how to be conserved, preserved, managed and presented. This article explores some of the complications associated with the notion of authenticity in heritage management and tourism, and suggests a contextual approach to authenticity.

COVID-19 lockdown revealed – among other aspects, shortcomings in educational thinking and processes in countries like Nepal. Apart from the surge in exploring online teaching and learning opportunities, this crisis also paved way for rethinking the prevalent education system. As with a 2016 report from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this inclination towards new avenues of educational tools provides a context to rethink education because technology alone cannot enable education. Fundamentally educational processes need to respond to specific contexts by anchoring itself to the context. Drawing upon alternative models of education, this paper suggests a contextual approach to learning with collaborative process and learner-centric pedagogy. The suggestion is based on the authors’ observations and experience in early education in general, but reflecting on the family experience of relevance of ‘contextual education’ approach in the times of COVID-19 crisis in particular. The contextual learning situates a learner – with a sense of freedom and responsibility, as the core driver of education, while other stakeholders (parents or teachers) facilitate the learning process by adapting to the interests and initiatives of the learner. This calls for a shift in our thinking about education – what it is, and what it should achieve, as well as democratizing and decentralizing the educational processes.

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) as an articulated concept and terminology gained prominence with the adoption of UNESCO’s 2003 convention on safeguarding ICH. The convention also emphasizes capacity building as a key strategy for the safeguarding of ICH (UNESCO, n.d.-b). UNESCO, through the Global Capacity Building programme (UNESCO, n.d.-c), has already put together a network of facilitators and a series of initiatives to promote and implement these activities. Yet, there is a need for more capacity-building programmes to cater to diverse needs and audiences. During the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, one of the many programmes offered online was that by the Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University, on ‘ICH and Sustainable Development’ with financial assistance from the International Centre for Information and Networking for Safeguarding ICH (ICHCAP) and supported by UNESCO Bangkok. Originally intended to be in person, it had to be offered online due to the uncertainties of the pandemic. However, the change of mode allowed a larger access to more participants and an extended timeline for the workshop. It also became a constructive challenge to adapt a pedagogy from a field-based into an online environment. This article reflects on such experiences and outcomes of the workshop and concludes with some thoughts on the post-COVID-19 pedagogical strategies for teaching and learning on ICH.

Participatory approach has been used in conservation of historic built environments as a methodological response to the need of including voices from users and inhabitants. However the implication and efficiency of such processes have not always been satisfactory. Drawing from some observations in Nepal, the paper examines the notion of participation in conservation projects and argues that the notion of participation shall be understood from multiple positions. The paper argues that participation is not just about getting users and inhabitants involved in the process, but it should also be about orienting the professionals in the given social context. Unless a professional realizes his/her own worldview and how it may influence the participatory process in a project, the essence of the participation remains in question. As an attempt to address such challenges, this paper draws some theoretical and methodological concepts from anthropology.

The Old City of Ahmedabad was inscribed in the list of World Heritage Sites (UNESCO) at the 41st session of the World Heritage Committee in Poland in July 8, 2017. Though the ICOMOS evaluation and the draft decision prior to the session had it 'deferred', the committee discussed an amended draft decision and unanimously voted to inscribe the property onto the World Heritage List. This is an immediate reflection on the observations of the session proceedings (webcasted live and watched by author). I argue that a non-rigorous process of nomination-pursued through other forms of negotiation avoiding the recommendations of technical evaluation, may raise questions about the relevance of ICOMOS evaluation process and the credentials of the World Heritage Convention.