Is Guwahati Facing Risks of Sinking?

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Is Guwahati a Sinking City

By: R.S. Mooshahary

WITH THE MIGHTY Brahmaputra flowing alongside and the blue hills dotting the outline, the rivulets and hillocks interspersing
within, Guwahati is a naturally beautiful and elegant city. People aptly called it Pragjyotishpura in the olden days to signify
its attributes and tantric fame. It is the gateway to the seven sisters and the thriving metropolis of the east. It has no
doubt the resilience to accommodate the multitude but the human vagaries are degrading its physical standards continuously..

The city is literally sinking. The garbage and wastes that keep accumulating over it day after day, the stink and squalor,
and the ugliness thereof are so sickening that even the rag-picking, canine and feline inhabitants of the city avoid
foraging in them. Then there are the pavements, walkways, footpaths and roads in stages of unfinished repairs that pose
everyday risk to life and limbs because one has to wade amid the uncovered holes, broken slabs, protruding concrete pieces
and iron spikes and strewn rubbish to reach anywhere. Come rain for half an hour and it is a deluge in the city. The drains,
clogged with all the dirt, debris and stench, will overflow bringing the city to a squalid chaos. Rainwater is not the only
thing that floods Guwahati. The leaking pipes and choked drains can submerge parts of our city even when there is no rain.
Once I encountered such a situation in a posh locality, where furious water-jets spewing out of a huge pipe almost shattered
my car�s windowpanes and windshields as I crossed it. The people had free showers and free water, which they collected in
all shapes of vessels and the place was flooded � though there was no rain and the day was parched, hot and humid.

The city is cramped with vehicles due to an enormous increase in traffic, which its roads cannot accommodate. Guwahati has
to spread horizontally and the new ISBT terminal on the bypass is a good plan but its success will depend on the efficiency
of its management and connectivity to the city. Without waiting for the adjacent flyover to complete, the authorities should
start the ISBT service so that the problems of operationalizing it are resolved in stages. It will also protect the infrastructure
from damage due to prolonged disuse. The flyover under construction there should not be like the one at Ganeshguri, which is
possibly the only one in the world having more vehicles plying under than over it making those of us who often face under-flyover
congestion wonder if the massive structure has at all helped traffic management.

The problem of the city lies not with lack of resources but with the utilization of it all. One rainy day, I visited an
outpatient section of the Guwahati Medical College Hospital (GMCH). There was as much water inside as outside, but the
doctors unmindful of it were attending to numerous patients. Where has all the money allotted for improving facilities in
GMCH gone so that the doctors have to work under the leaking roof and patients do not get clean and hygienic health care?
Most of us do not get any service from the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC). We make our own garbage disposal, spend
huge amount on bore wells and pump sets for water, roads are hazardous with open drains, overhead wires, loitering cattle,
and we have to invest on standby power back-ups to offset erratic electric supply, and so on and so forth. Then some of us
have given valuable land free for widening roads. The last National Games propelled some action in constructions for which
the public fully cooperated. The Beltola- Bhetapara Stadium and the Bhetapara Games Village roads could not have improved
had we not voluntarily given our land. The corporation owes us materially and morally, for the land in question is highly
valuable and in some cases, like my own, along with the land one had to cut grown trees too to make way for the road. The
public is willing to cooperate with the GMC/GMDA but they must not be mere tax-collecting institutions.

It is beyond GMC�s capability to run the entire activities efficiently. The waste and garbage disposal service, the sewage
and manhole maintenance, and stray cattle impounding right should be outsourced and fresh staff intake in corporation stopped.
The existing staff can be part of the outsourcing package. The ASEB has given the job of monthly bill distribution, which I
know in my area, to some private parties and the result is that we get unfailingly the bill every third week of the month.
Earlier it was an irregular service putting the consumers at the mercy of the meter readers. The same efficiency will replace
the ennui of the present corporation staff after the task is outsourced. The maintenance of pavements can be entrusted with the
business houses in exchange of advertising rights. Good drainage system can completely stop artificial floods in the city. The
Beltola-Bhetapara road was a perennial waterhole, but now not a drop of rainwater accumulates there because of the drainage.
The market places, particularly the fish and meat stalls that are hell-holes of rotting wastes where rats, vermin and cockroaches
feed on the food sold to humans, should be leased out for ensuring better hygiene and proper maintenance of the area.

The police has be proactive in keeping the city clean and safe besides managing traffic. The government should notify to
extend the provision of Section 100 of the Assam Police Act to enable the police to act against those who use the public
road for private purpose, leave manholes and drains uncovered, allow cattle to stray, use high-decibel noise through
amplifiers or vehicle horns etc. Kamakhya temple is not only a tourist attraction but also a landmark in the city landscape
but the pestering pandas fleece the pilgrims to no end making the visit there a nightmarish memory. The temple also terribly
lacks in hygienic conditions. The government should emulate the standard of temple administration in the south and introduce the same in
the Kamakhya temple.

When a city declines physically, it mirrors the moral degradation of its populace. Few days back, a destitute young woman
gave birth to a child near DC�s office in full public view. She remained in throes swathed in her placental blood for hours
and the baby died unattended by the time the police took her to a nearby hospital. None from the public came to her help. On
the same day the residents of Fatasil-Ambari brutally clobbered to death a full-grown female leopard because it strayed
there from the nearby jungle in search of food. The city is fast becoming the haven for the outlaws and mountebanks without
fear for the law. Maintaining a city is as much the task of the government as of the people.

Our civic sense is abysmally deficient and we use the public places like our trash bins and our private toilets. We have to
mend our ways and behave here too with the same civic sense as we do while visiting developed countries and not commit
public nuisance. We must also know how to hold the public authorities accountable for their misdeeds. Some time back a
public-spirited NGO approached the Assam Information Commission to force the PWD to inform them why the footpaths along the
Bhangaghar flyover were not covered. The PWD had to act and the footpaths were covered. People should use the Right to
Information Act to know why the roads and pavements are perpetually under repair � even arterial roads. We should know why
after and not before repairing the road, divider is made necessitating breaking of the road again, why the rainwater still
floods the road, why the GMC wasted public money in procuring the fluorescent jackets which are untraceable now etc.
Somebody must be accountable if the public money spent is not judicious and honest.

Guwahati is an ancient city dear to us. It represents the quintessential Assamese culture and ethos, its equanimity and
anxiety. It is the visible face of Assam � of her past and the present, prosperity and poverty, cheers and fears. We cannot
let this city become a one-horse town and decay under the heaps of indolence and corruption, but build it to glory and
grandeur.

(The writer is Chief Information Commissioner, Asom)