Flood-free Guwahati

Guwahati, the largest city in the Northeast, continues to suffer from a poor drainage system. While the city is blessed by nature with several rivers, streams, rivulets, and wetlands, successive governments have only displayed their inability to make use of this god-gifted network in order to resolve Guwahati’s water-logging and flood problems. Though the concerned departments, including GMDA and Guwahati Municipal Corporation, had made tall claims of cleaning the drains and rivers before the onset of the monsoon, all such claims were rendered fruitless by a brief shower two days ago. Right-thinking citizens in every locality of Guwahati will agree that officials of the concerned agencies lack sincerity when it comes to cleaning the drains, rivers, and other natural channels. Officers designated to supervise the work often lack the courage to ensure that the labourers engaged in the task remove every lump of garbage from the drains and the natural water channels. Citizens also fail to understand why the majority of the sixty Ward Councillors do not visit the sites when the drain cleaning operations are carried out. Any sensible resident of Guwahati will be able to identify four major reasons behind the water-logging and flood problem of the city: (i) failure of the authorities concerned to clean the drains and channels properly and with due sincerity, (ii) failure of the authorities concerned to remove encroachers from the city’s hills and wetlands, (iii) failure of the government to take punitive measures against the erring officers, and (iv) failure of the authorities concerned to penalize those irresponsible people who dump garbage in drains, rivers, streams, and wetlands. The combined outcome of these four failures is that tax-paying and law-abiding citizens continue to suffer for no fault of theirs. Political parties and leaders too have to be held responsible for the flood problem in Guwahati because they create hurdles every time the government makes a move to evict encroachers from the wetlands and hills. Given these realities, tax-payers and law-abiding citizens must raise their voices in unison to make Guwahati livable year-round.