It took just one hour. Sixty minutes. That’s all it took for Guwahati to transform from a bustling, overheated city into a floating maze of despair, with cars bobbing like rubber ducks, homes turning into aquariums, and roads disappearing beneath murky waves of "development."

And while the Assam government might be busy pointing fingers at Meghalaya’s rainfall or the villainy of USTM (because obviously, a university has the power to sink an entire city), I’ve lived long enough in Guwahati to know exactly where the blame lies.

Spoiler Alert: It's Us, But Mostly Them

Yes, we citizens aren’t saints. We treat dustbins like endangered species and believe that drains are where dreams (and plastic wrappers, diapers, and furniture) go to die. We’ve managed to turn the Bharalu into a bubbling cauldron of effluence, a monument to our collective apathy. But let’s not get distracted—this is a story about systemic sabotage dressed up as urban planning.

Built To Fail: A Masterclass In Unscientific Planning

Guwahati, once a quiet town where the surrounding hills whispered and the rivers meandered gently, has become an urban hydra, growing flyovers like limbs without ever thinking about where the water will go once the roads are done.

Concrete has replaced greenery, malls have mushroomed on wetlands, and drain covers are optional if you're lucky. In some places, the drains are more philosophical than functional—promised in design, never realised in reality.

The so-called "city planners"—a term I now believe is used ironically—seem to have been inspired by folklore, not facts. We are a city expanding sideways and upwards without a shred of geological or environmental sense.

Let’s build another housing colony on a hillside! Let’s cut down another forest patch for a cricket stadium! What could possibly go wrong, apart from, say, gravity and climate?

Hills Today, Water Tomorrow

The Assam government, ever the escape artist, routinely blames Meghalaya’s rainfall—as if Meghalaya hasn’t been raining for centuries before Guwahati decided to start sinking.

Since last year, or may be since a year-and-a-half earlier, the villain has been USTM, a university across the state border, somehow accused of funneling floods across the hills like some magical wizard of water.

Meanwhile, back home, our own hills are disappearing faster than election promises. The forest department nods approvingly as JCBs gouge out the lungs of the city.

Illegal hill-cutting? Just another Tuesday. What used to be forest cover is now a network of landslide-prone scars—and when rain falls, Guwahati bleeds mud.

Progress Measured In Potholes

I remember a time when the monsoon was romantic. The petrichor, the chorus of frogs, the city glowing in the after-rain-light. Now, it’s the season of dread. People check rain forecasts not for umbrellas, but to decide whether they’ll need a boat to reach their offices.

One friend asked me recently if Guwahati was ever meant to be a city this large. I told him no—Guwahati was meant to be a charming town with natural drainage, breathable air, and human-scale infrastructure. But then came the rush. The greed. The great Guwahati Makeover that nobody planned for but everybody profited from.

Citizens Of Convenience, Government Of Catastrophe

Let’s not pretend we aren’t part of the mess. We litter. We build over drains. We bribe to construct another floor. But while we’re guilty of negligence, the government is guilty of design.

Who allowed construction on wetlands? Who sanctioned buildings in floodplains? Who cut the hills and forgot to plant trees in return? Who promises smart cities while the sewer lines haven’t been cleaned since the last regime? The same officials who now give press conferences from dry conference halls while the rest of us swim through civic failure.

Final Words

They say Guwahati is “booming.” That we’re on the path to being a metropolitan marvel. But if one hour of rain can sink us, maybe we need to ask: what are we really building here? A city, or a ticking time bomb?

We, the citizens, may have contributed to the mess. But the authorities? They designed it.

And until someone decides to treat Guwahati as a living, breathing city rather than a cash cow to be milked dry, we’ll continue to drown—not just in water, but in incompetence.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go rescue my two-wheeler. It’s floating somewhere near what used to be my garage.

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