Delhi - In a nondescript Indian town hammered by the monsoon rains, hundreds of miles from the nearest city of any size, a small, unimpressive-looking house is slowly falling down.

The roof is bowed and cracked from the years of rain. One of the walls is giving way to a tree, and damage is still visible from an earthquake in 1934. But by the end of the year, the Indian authorities say, this unassuming location will be transformed into a "world-class heritage site".

Because this is where, on June 25, 1903, George Orwell was born. He was just Eric Blair then, the son of a minor British colonial official put in charge of the local opium industry, but one day he would reinvent himself as a scourge of injustice and one of the most distinctive voices of the 20th century, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

For a century, the house where he was born, Public Works Building 2/12 in Motihari, has lain forgotten. But now the local authorities are planning to transform the area into an Orwell Park, complete with a giant replica of Orwell's book, Animal Farm, with passages from the text inscribed on it.

The house will be restored to its condition in 1903. Beside it a new Orwell museum will be built. A 4ha park is to be planted with trees from Britain, India, and Burma, where Orwell also lived. The town's lake, long silted up, is to be restored.

'We want the birthplace of Orwell to be a heritage site of international importance'
"We want the birthplace of Orwell to be a heritage site of international importance," said L M Singhvi, chairperson of the Heritage Foundation of India, which is funding the project, and a former ambassador to Britain.

"And we are quite optimistic that by the end of 2006, it will become a tourist hub for all foreign tourists visiting India."

If it does, it will be one of the most remote and unlikely tourist hubs in the world. This is Bihar, India's most lawless state, and the only boom business here is kidnapping.

The streets of Motihari, a dirt-poor town of 150 000 people, are said to be dangerous even in daylight. Motihari is way off the tourist trail at the moment.

Only the most die-hard Orwell fans ever make it to the town. It is 19 hours by train from Delhi, and a five-hour drive from Patna.

Until a group of academics made the arduous trek out to Motihari in 2003 to mark Orwell's centenary, almost nobody in the town had ever heard of Orwell. Not even the then-occupant of the Orwell house, the English teacher at the local school.