It’s gone decrepit with age, damaged terribly over the years by monsoons and earthquakes, it’s hundreds of miles from the nearest city, and armed gangs of robbers and kidnappers openly roam the nearby highways, but authorities in India say that by the end of the year they are going to turn the birthplace of George Orwell into a “world-class heritage site,” according to a report in The Independent by Justin Huggler. The house, in Bihar, India, will be restored, an “Orwell Park” will feature “trees from Britain, India and Burma, where Orwell also lived,” and there will be “a giant replica of Orwell’s book Animal Farm, with passages from the text inscribed on it.” L. M. Singhvi, a former ambassador to the UK who is now chairman of the Heritage Foundation of India, the organization funding the project, says he hopes to make the place where Orwell was born on 25 June 1903, the son of the local British opium agent, “a heritage site of international importance. And we are quite optimistic that by the end of 2006 it will become a hub for all foreign tourists visiting India.”