Guwahati: Coexisting With Garbage Since Centuries

Guwahati, for centuries, has been one of the most important cities in Assam, in particular, and in the entire northeast, in general.

From the pages of prehistory to the latest blogs about history, Guwahati has been a prominent city, and it has developed by leaps and bounds over the centuries.

Even though the city has witnessed many changes, what has remained constant is the piles of garbage and the lack of basic civic sense among its citizens.

Heaps of garbage, open urinals, and obnoxious odours were common even during the time of Lachit Borphukan.

The situation was the same even after the British entered Assam and the northeast.

To educate the people of Guwahati about cleanliness, the British did their best, introducing numerous rules and regulations.

Awareness campaigns were also carried out, and severe fines were announced against the offenders. However, very little changed…

Throwing garbage in the open, littering the water bodies around the city, and urinating in the open were some of the issues that the British tried their best to mitigate.

The obnoxious nature of Guwahati, in fact, was a reason that the British thought of establishing the capital in some other city.

However, they decided against it and went ahead with establishing the Guwahati City Committee and the Municipal Corporation, and tried their best to give the city a facelift.

The British also implemented several schemes and programmes to make Guwahati neat, clean, and litter-free!

People were engaged in keeping the city clean, and large-scale awareness campaigns were also carried out. The British, in fact, tasted success for a brief period.

As anti-British movements across the country grew stronger and larger, the various changes they brought were challenged by the people. Eventually, the cleanliness drive in Guwahati was forced to take a back seat.

Over the last seven decades, Guwahati has continued to rank a step higher every day on the dirt metre.

How and when the city will become clean and dirt-free is beyond our assumptions!