‘City of Eastern Lights’ gropes in the dark

Way back in the 7th Century, when the great Chinese traveller Xuan Tsang visited Pragjyotishpura, as Guwahati was known in those days, he was full of praise for the ‘City of Eastern Lights’.

Way back in the 7th Century, when the great Chinese traveller Xuan Tsang visited Pragjyotishpura, as Guwahati was known in those days, he was full of praise for the ‘City of Eastern Lights’. It is a well-planned place with water from the river flowing around the city’s numerous gardens, he wrote in his famous accounts. Fourteen centuries later, water still does flow around modern-day Guwahati, but not in the manner in which the Chinese scholar wrote. Instead it has become a dangerously waterlogged city, with drains leading nowhere, and one spell of rain throwing life out of gear for 18 lakh people.

If drainage is, well, a drain on the Assam capital, so is its unplanned and haphazard growth. Only a couple of months ago, a survey placed Guwahati 17th in terms of cleanliness among 18 capital cities of the country. The parameters were clean drinking water, a garbage-disposal system, clean roads, air pollution, public toilets, greenery and open space, public transport and a drainage system.

“Bad planning, if not lack of planning altogether, is responsible for the chaos that Guwahati is in,” says Amiya Kumar Das, an architect currently working in the US who recently wrote a book titled Urban Planning in India. Das blamed a lopsided masterplan that had not been properly implemented.

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In fact, a new masterplan for Guwahati is in the works, with Guwahati Development Department Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma calling it a serious attempt to salvage the city and transform it into a centre of growth. “Guwahati in fact is going to be the epicentre of growth in Southeast Asia in the wake of India pursuing its ambitious Look East Policy,” Sarma claims.

Another problem plaguing the city is its burgeoning vehicle population, far more than its crumbling roads can accommodate. “There are about four lakh registered vehicles, and on an average 60,000 vehicles ply on Guwahati roads every day,” points out Randeep Barua, SP (Traffic). There are just 376 personnel to manage this traffic, a strength sanctioned way back in 1980. Garbage disposal also remains a problem, even as 400 tonne gets added every day.

As the city grows, it has encroached into hills, reserved forests and wetlands around it, endangering wildlife. “Such destruction could have been prevented if the Government was genuinely interested in developing the city,” says Dhiren Barua, President of ‘Save Guwahati, Build Guwahati’, a leading NGO. It was just last week that the Government admitted that about 7,300 hectares of land were under encroachment, including portions of Deepar Beel, an important wetland and Ramsar Site that was recently declared a bird sanctuary.

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