Guwahati, Assam

The virtual capital city of north-east India, from where the Bard of Brahmaputra started his musical journey around the world, is hosting the 75th senior national aquatic meet paving the way for assembling nearly one thousand aquatic sports stars, organisers, journalists from different parts of India during the championship at Dr. Zakir Hussain Aquatic Complex in Sarusajai of Guwahati. Assam Swimming Association, affiliated to the Swimming Federation of India, takes the pain to provide space for the globally most participated sports.

Guwahati, which has emerged from the base of Pragjyotishpur of ancient Kamrup empire, today supports nearly 1.5 million dwellers along with 6 to 8 lakh floating population. Identified as a strategic city while New Deli is looking forward to south-east Asian nations, the prehistoric city still struggling to have a safe & secured, clean & green, flash flood-free status with the regular supply of piped drinking water to households along with other civic facilities meant for city-dwellers.

Needless to mention, the Guwahatians deserve a people friendly city with a smart police force working in synchronization with the residents. They should feel the confidence to go to any police station any time with their grievances as well as important inputs necessitated for the larger interest. Street lights across the city must work and the installed CCTV cameras in various points should function flawlessly. These all arrangements should work as a strong deterrent to the criminals.

Children and senior citizens should be secured while moving around the city. Public transport needs to be developed and managed in a dignified way so that everyone can travel safely. The commuters in the city should get benefits from the public transport till midnight, now which turns dead during the evening hours. The government-run city buses, if not the private ones, should ply on selected routes till late night to cater the need of shift employees in workplaces.

Needless to say that more people use the public transport means the concerned authority’s relief while managing the traffic on the road and it will finally help in reducing the degree of air (auto-mobile) pollution significantly. The garbage management system needs more efficient workforces. Open drains in some parts of the city may cause a major health hazard to the citizens.

As the city experiences heavy rains in monsoon, the drains must have the capacity to take the sudden water load. Often the drains in city areas start overflowing after a downpour and the filth reaches the streets and even the residential campuses. The water logging problem in many areas of Guwahati should be addressed scientifically.The city has over 15 small and medium hills with a large number of residents taking shelter there, necessary policies should be adopted to deal with the issue. The virgin hills, whichever left today, must be protected methodically. Many streams inside the city have almost died because of human aggression and a number of wetlands are on the verge of extinction. The authority must preserve the water bodies to protect the fragile environment of Guwahati.

The key problem faced by most Guwahatians for decades remains the scarcity of drinking water. Thousands of families have to buy water on a regular basis and the situation turns worse in pre-monsoon days. The groundwater depletion because of its excessive exploitation in the last few years has worsened the situation. In some areas the groundwater is found contaminated with fluoride and arsenic making the situation more complicated. If proper initiatives are not taken on time, it would emerge as a major health hazard to the residents.

Whoever visits the sprawling city from outside expresses surprise why Guwahatians are deprived of water even though the mighty Brahmaputra river flows adjacent to it. The State governments in Dispur have taken various mega projects to supply drinking water to every household in the city, but the ground reality remains the same. The consumers are still waiting for the water, supplied regularly to their kitchens by the concerned authority. Judicial use of drinking water should also be promoted among the city people.

Many Guwahatians use the drinking water for all purposes from cleaning cars to gardening to washing clothes. The practice only reflects how much precious water the consumers misuse in their day-to-today life.The concept of rain water harvesting should be promoted so that the residents use the supplied water only for drinking purposes. The rest should be managed by the stored rain water to the optimum level.

In recent years, the government has initiated the development of North Guwahati to reduce the population pressure in the southern bank of Brahmaputra.

After the IITG, various other important institutions including AIIMS Guwahati has been established in the northern bank. A new all weather bridge over Brahmaputra connecting the busiest city points with North Guwahati should ease the movement of commuters as well as the essential items.

Nevertheless the residents deserved to be made collaborators in the growth and development of the entire city. All possible efforts to be made to transform Guwahati as a Krira Prangan for the populace of eastern India along with Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet (now under China), Myanmar and Bangladesh, where the sustained peace, tranquillity and progress can exist with no further hindrance.