City’s vanishing hills

Will the government or any other organisation have details about the volume of the hills in and around Guwahati when Dispur was chosen as Assam’s temporary capital and today? Guwahati has as many as eighteen hills within and around its city limits, some of which are covered under eight reserve forests, apart from a wildlife sanctuary. Over the past four decades, the rains have washed down thousands of tonnes of earth and silt from Guwahati during every monsoon. As the rains bring down giant volumes of earth and silt, the drains get filled up and blocked. The topsoil erosion also drastically compromises the discharge capacity of central lifelines like the Bharalu and Bahini rivers, apart from several other natural streams and nullahs which, for unknown reasons, continue to survive (the majority have disappeared on being occupied by builders as well as individuals). While the Guwahati Municipal Corporation, and in some cases the Water Resource Department, remove the silt in a typical half-hearted manner, this silt is taken away to fill up low-lying areas and wetlands, in the process reducing the city’s natural rainwater-absorbing capacity. Failure on the part of the authorities concerned – in this case, the Soil Conservation Department and the Forest Department – to take any worthwhile measures to protect the hills in general and the forest areas in particular from land-hungry encroachers (many of whom have the blessings of powerful people) has only led to the massive destruction of the city’s hills. Many hills have in the process become vulnerable to landslides. The Kamrup (M) District Disaster Management Authority and Assam State Disaster Management Authority have only recently identified as many as 366 spots across the hills of Guwahati as landslide-prone. The majority of the people living in the city’s hills do not pay any municipal or land tax because they are encroachers. The tax-paying citizens, on the other hand, suffer from flash floods and waterlogging because of these encroachers. Additionally, the rainwater brings down all kinds of materials, including discharge from the kutcha latrines of hill encroachers, thus adding to the public health woes of the city. Soil Conservation Minister Ashwini Ray Sarkar inspected several ongoing and completed projects on Saturday aimed at mitigating flash floods and soil erosion in the hilly areas of Guwahati. Tax-paying citizens only hope these issues have caught his attention.