A Very Unsafe City

Guwahati has already earned the disrepute of being the crime capital of India. The fact that it has been rather selective in the kinds of crime that gets committed may not make a very significant difference the city’s ugly reputation. The crimils of the city seem to prefer crimes like trafficking in women and girls and the rcotics drug trade. Not surprisingly, Guwahati has become a major centre for drug peddling. But Guwahati has also become a very unsafe city. Even walking on the pavements of the city can be a hazardous undertaking especially on rainy days. In many parts of the city, the slabs that cover the drains and are part of the pavements, are missing. One need not do much more than walk in an unfamiliar part of the city with broken pavements to court the most unexpected and undignified kind of death. What is even worse is that during the rainy season power cables often sp and lie submerged in the accumulated waist-deep rainwater on some of our streets, electrifying sizeable waterlogged areas. Only the other day, a schoolboy was electrocuted when he accidentally came in contact with a submerged live cable. He and the person who tried to save him were both dead. That is how unsafe our city can be during the rainy season. What is much worse, however, is that there is no one to accept responsibility for such senseless deaths. What the city needs now is an organization that will take over the task of suing the appropriate authorities for deaths arising from the neglect of legitimate duties by employees of all levels.