By our Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, March 15: Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawing never can be regained – Stendhal. Does this quote has any takers in the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government at Dispur for which a 15-year-long rule has proved too short to perform?
In the past 15 years, the Tarun Gogoi-led government in the State has made the announcement of many development projects that have been confined only in slogans in hoardings and advertisements, not on the ground. Will they ever see light of the day? Examples are in everybody’s doorsteps. If Guwahati is taken as a case study, the long-term non-performance of the government at Dispur becomes glaringly visible. Many areas in Guwahati, including the Paltan Bazar area, have been lying without any development for years. Such an area in Paltan Bazar is Borsola Beel that is yet to be made free from stinking garbage.
Borsola is the wetland in the heart of Guwahati where water rushes in from areas like Chandamari, Silpukhuri, Ambari, Paltan Bazar, etc. With the wetland being filled in with garbage, it is losing its water containing holding every other day. It is still fresh in the minds of people in the city that the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) did use this wetland as the dumping ground for a long time. However, even after the civic body staying away from this practice, not before rigorous protests from environment activists, Borsola Beel remains a dumping pit even today in the city where people continue to throw garbage under the very nose of those at the helm of affairs. When garbage disposal system in the city is still to be streamlined, how come the authority stop the taxpayers to stop throwing garbage to the wetland? This is not all. Some of the drains in the city that flow to Borsola Beel carry a huge quantity of garbage along with water. This is an elephantine problem that continues to expose glaringly the failure on the part of GMC and Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA).
Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s Additiol Chief Secretary MGVK Bhanu did announce that Borsola Beel would be development as a tourist spot in the city. His announcement has also gone in vein. Till the formation of the next government at Dispur, nothing tangible can be done towards that end now. Meanwhile, it is known from sources concerned that crores of rupees have been earmarked for the development of Borsola Beel under the recently announced SMART City plan. Will the SMART City plan be able to protect Borsola? This is a million dollar question now.