The areas targeted by the Implementation Action Team (IAT) are cities on the banks of Hugli River in West Bengal, India. The origins of the unique value of much of their built heritage can be traced back to European trading and fortification (the French in Chandannagar from the 1670s, the Danes urbanizing Serampore from the 1750s and Barrackpore being developed by the British in the 1770s). During the nineteenth century, Indian merchants and traders who enriched themselves supplying the Europeans had grand residences built in a highly original hybrid style: their Palladian facades mirrored the public buildings built by the Europeans, but their cloistered inner courtyards were geared to the climate, multiple family occupancy and to Hindu devotional practice. The importance of this wealth of built heritage and the hybrid cultural heritage that has sprung from it in terms of food cultures, musical traditions, language variation etc, led the UK historian of heritage conservation Philip Davies to comment in 2015 that the Hugli 'is not just an Indian river but belongs to the world'. The state of West Bengal lies below the median in terms of many of the standard development markers when compared against other Indian states and the state of the heritage and tourism sectors reflect this. For example, the first hotel for overseas visitors opened in Serampore only in 2018. The economic liberalization of India starting in 1991, however, has led to the Hugli Corridor being subjected to overwhelming and accelerating urbanization increasing the population density, but this wave of so-called development has put domestic built heritage at extreme risk. The developers' imperative is that its riverine environment and excellent commuter rail links make the Hugli Corridor the ideal suburban dormitory pendant to the megacity of Kolkata (population 14.03M in the 2011 census). The Hugli Corridor's Unique Selling Point, therefore, also places it at the highest risk. In the absence of any enforceable planning law and building control, hundreds of heritage properties have been demolished and replaced by three-storey, identikit, concrete flats. IAT's partners, the West Bengal Heritage Commission and the Serampore Initiative have both done important work, listing and renovating seven public buildings, but the IAT's blended mix of wealth-creation, renovation, education, well-being and documentary film pathways will show the West Bengal state government a diverse toolkit of ways to invest resources to preserve and develop the region's cultural and built heritage before it is too late. Crucially, the IAT will do this through the people and organisations that its predecessor project, the Hugli River of Cultures Project (HRCP), won and up-skilled for the cause of heritage. The predecessor AHRC-ICHR funded Hugli River of Cultures Project documented heritage assets and sensitized large numbers of people into how the river connects them, but the IAT's pathway activities will make selected key individuals even more active throughout 2020. Those individuals will no longer be only witnesses and co-creators of heritage knowledge, they will move up to the next level and apply the IAT's tools to built and cultural heritage and used both to create wealth and well-being for themselves in a sustainable manner. When in ends in January 2021, the Implementation Action Team (IAT) will show the new agency that West Bengalis from diverse socio-economic groups can have in creating bottom-up heritage infrastructure in their state (pop 98.8M, 2018), thus marking a radical and much-needed change of course from the overwhelming top-down, culturally elitist and (rather unfortunate) superficial efforts that have characterized official interventions to date (not WBHC). It is only with active intervention and skilled local people that effective action can be taken to address the present heritage emergency caused by urban sprawl and to prepare this low-lying region for climate change