As Guwahati turns 175, a city’s growth story shows cracks beneath the shine
Guwahati, May 8: Come June 21, 2025, and Guwahati will step into the 176th year of its urban identity. Guwahati had earned the urban entity status in the year 1850, and the act through which it became a town is known as Act XXVI of 1850, enacted on June 21, 1850. With a small beginning in 1850, having a mere 3000-odd people as its inhabitants, Guwahati today is moving ahead with rapid and unabated strides towards becoming a leading metropolitan city of the country.
A tiny town with an area of little over 4 square miles (6.5 square kilometres), Guwahati, today in contrast, has a population of 1,405,000 people and has an area of 217 sq km. Another matter of great significance is that the Gauhati of 1850 could hardly boast of even one cement-built structure, and most of the houses had wooden posts and thatch grass as roofs. There were only a few Assam-type houses which had GI roofs. The recently dismantled Mahafezkhana (record room built in 1865) was supposedly the strongest structure of that period.
Talking about roads, in contrast to today's double-lane and four-lane roads illuminated by LEDs, Guwahati of 1850 did not have even one road made of stone chips and asphalt (pucca road), and its narrow lanes were meekly lit up with carbide and kerosene lamps after dusk. Today's Guwahati has innumerable high-rise buildings, seven five-star hotels, more than 50 luxury hotels, and a host of luxury shopping malls and cineplexes. But honestly speaking, instead of feeling proud and happy to see my childhood dream town, Guwahati – a modest and silent Guwahati – transform into a huge metropolis, a sense of sadness tends to take the better of me. The reason for my unhappiness about the city is quite obvious – its unplanned growth is threatening to take it apart. It looks as if an ever-rising population, proliferation of vehicles, unruly traffic, shallow-narrow and clogged drains and inadequate garbage disposal arrangements are going to make the city unliveable.
The nascent city of the early sixties of the past century had all the potential of growing into a beautiful planned city of the region, but missed opportunities and mishandling of the affairs by the subsequent governments and civic authorities messed everything up. It was during this period that the city was allowed to grow in a manner with no planning nor any guidelines to follow. In 1961, the news of a master plan did make the rounds, but nothing much was heard about its implementation till years later.
The next effort towards implementation of a master plan was made in 1969, and the period between 1969 and 1973 coincidentally was too crucial for the city, mainly because of the question of a new capital for the state. Meghalaya, the new state, was in a hurry to see Assam's capital shifted from Shillong. Dispur as the capital was only a temporary arrangement, but there followed a mad rush for land in and around the place due to the strong belief that it would be an unalterable decision.
Due to the absence of strict guidelines regarding the conservation of green belts, reserve areas and water bodies, land purchase continued in a frenzied manner. Amidst such a situation where disarray ruled the roost, the master plan of 1969 made no headway.
In the meantime, the permanent capital issue started hotting up, and Jagiroad, Silghat and Chandrapur were shortlisted as suitable sites for the capital. In 1983, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ceremonially laid the foundation stone of the capital complex at Chandrapur. But the pro-Guwahati lobby in the government and the pressure exerted by the public of Guwahati saw to it that Dispur remained as the permanent capital. This pro-Guwahati-centric bias deprived the state of a planned capital city and another opportunity to ease the already overburdened city from further brunt.
Curiously enough, a master plan was prepared in the year 1985, but due to lack of transparency and motivation, it failed to make its impact. When planning was the need of the hour, vested interests, ad hoc decision-making and political manoeuvring took over. Encroachment over Deepor Beel started during this period, and by the end of the ninth decade of the century, most of the hills around the city had lost their green cover.
Today's Guwahati is in a mutilated state. Roads and bylanes are in a pathetic condition in most parts of the city. The construction work of the five-km-long flyover from Noonmati to Guwahati Club has caused nightmares for road users with broken footpaths and dust pollution. Pedestrians and vehicle drivers have to tread through potholed, uneven roads and at times pass through spots where unguarded large and deep pits dug for massive posts pose dangers to life and limb. Come monsoon and the city populace is sure to be in for a far more difficult time with broken roads, absence of pavements and dangerously piled-up debris and steel rods sticking up like sore thumbs.
The residents have suffered so much due to poor drainage, but the government seems to be prioritising flyovers. It is time the city planners scratched their brains on the problems at the ground level. For an overpopulated city with an exponential increase in the number of vehicles and unregulated construction activities, the need of the situation is a new city on the lines of Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra. The population of North Guwahati is also increasing, and the construction activities there are also picking up pace, but here again, proper attention to the planning aspect of the matter seems to be missing. It is vital for the civic authorities, planners and the public to bear in mind that mistakes made during Guwahati's early days as a city are not repeated in the case of North Guwahati.
By
Bhaskar Phukan