In the early eighties of the last century, I stepped into the city of Guwahati for the first time. Those moments of walking through the lanes and alleys of the city on a winter morning, holding my parents’ hands, remain vivid in my mind even today. I do not know whether Guwahati was ‘smart’ back then or not; I can only say that Guwahati was a peaceful town, submerged in green and sylvan silence. The hills surrounding the city bloomed with colorful flowers, and thousands of migratory birds swam in the bosom of the Brahmaputra.
Seeing the glistening back of a large Borali fish in the waters of what is now a polluted Bharalu River made our childhood hearts scream with joy. We spent a night at a relative’s house located at the foothills of the Guwahati Medical College campus. In the morning, I saw my aunt collecting drinking water in an earthen pot from a spring flowing beside their house. The air of Guwahati, too, was perhaps largely pure—just as the minds of the people were pure.
Today, nearly four decades later, that Guwahati has become wretched from all sides. We didn’t even realize on which horizon the flocks of wild ducks swimming in the Luit vanished—just as we failed to notice at which point in time Guwahati’s green cover disappeared. Right before the eyes of the residents, a river like the Bharalu was turned into a drain. Concrete buildings cropped up everywhere without any planning. Ponds, wetlands, and fields were all buried in the race for development, and Guwahati transformed into a city of drains and garbage. I now come to the context of the numerous promises made by the ruling party over the last decade to beautify this wretched and stinking Guwahati, and whether those promises have been realized today.
Promises of the Election Manifesto
Before the 2016 Assam Assembly elections, the ‘Assam Vision Document 2016–25’ published by the BJP provided the following promises under the heading ‘Guwahati Development’:
a. Revising the Master Plan of Guwahati.
b. Preventing traffic congestion by building new roads, widening existing roads, and creating a few tunnel routes wherever necessary.
c. Establishing a new water supply system to cover the entire population of the city.
d. Using state-of-the-art technologies to prevent flash floods.
e. Reorganising the garbage disposal system of the city in line with the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
f. Creating green canopies in all areas of the city.
g. Building a large number of green parks and joggers’ points all over the city.
h. Preventing the destruction of hills and hillocks in and around the city.
i. Protecting water bodies in and around the city.
The significant point is that since not a single one of the aforementioned promises was implemented during Sarbananda Sonowal’s tenure, no promises regarding the development of Guwahati were included in the ‘Sankalp Patra’ published by the BJP for the 2021 Assembly elections.
Promises Made in Budget Speeches
I now come to the promises the Government of Assam has made regarding the development of Guwahati from 2016 through the recent 2025–26 budget speeches. In the 2016–17 budget speech, the then Finance Minister—and current Chief Minister of Assam—Himanta Biswa Sarma outlined several key promises under the heading ‘Guwahati Development: Smart City under Construction’. Some of these were as follows:
a. Providing drinking water supply to parts of West and South Guwahati.
b. Upgrading Guwahati into a ‘Smart City’ under the Smart City Mission. A proposal was made to invest Rupees 2,256 crore in Smart City projects over the next five years. Key components included area-based programs like the development of the Bharalu River, Mora Bharalu, Deepor Beel, Borsola Beel, and the Brahmaputra riverfront, alongside integrated ICT-based tools for public transport and streetscaping.
c. Coordinating with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for a comprehensive and technologically effective solution to Guwahati’s flash floods.
d. Preparing a master plan for Guwahati’s open spaces and parks, with a proposal to interconnect and develop them based on Singapore’s Park Interconnector Model. Citizens would be able to travel seamlessly from one park to another on foot, by cycle, or by bus. This would also include the wetlands. As a beginning, an international-standard botanical garden would be established at the old jail campus in Fancy Bazaar.
e. Developing Guwahati as a ‘Green City’ by installing solar panels on every electric pole to generate solar power.
f. Installing lifts at every foot-over bridge to make them pedestrian-friendly.
In the 2017–18 Budget Speech, some of the promises regarding Guwahati’s development were:
a. A proposal to form a separate authority named the Assam State Capital Region Development Authority (ASCRDA).
b. Taking up projects to build two bridges over the Brahmaputra to expand the city—one connecting Panbazar to North Guwahati and the other connecting Palasbari to Sualkuchi.
c. A decision to build an international-standard botanical garden at the old Fancy Bazaar jail campus under the ‘Guwahati Open Space and Park Integrator Network’, modelled after Singapore’s ‘Park Interconnect Model’.
d. Implementing a project by the Guwahati Water Board to solve the city’s solid waste and sewage problems using state funds.
e. A proposal to construct a concrete drain in the Noonmati basin to solve artificial flooding in Zoo Road, Chandmari, Jyotinagar, and Noonmati, which was expected to be completed by April 2017.
In subsequent years, the announcements made in budget speeches for Guwahati’s development were partly repetitions of old promises and partly innovative new ones. These included:
Mandatory Road Excavation:
Since roads in Guwahati were often rebuilt without proper excavation, their height would gradually increase, causing waterlogging in adjacent residential and office areas. To tackle this, a directive was issued making it mandatory to excavate the road before reconstruction to ensure the road height does not increase (2018–19 Budget Speech).
Flood Mitigation:
To mitigate urban flooding, the GMDA undertook desilting and cleaning work in the Pamohi River, Silsako Beel, Borsola Beel, Bondajan, Sarusola Beel, and Noonmati (2020–21 Speech).
Water Supply:
The Guwahati Metropolitan Drinking Water and Sewerage Board (GMDWSB) took up the ‘Guwahati Water Supply’ project with JICA assistance, covering South, Central, and North Guwahati. This project was slated for completion in July 2022 (2020–21 Budget Speech).
Eviction and Rehabilitation:
The government would adopt a ‘humanitarian approach’ to free the hills of Guwahati from encroachment. It would identify suitable land and relocate eligible landless encroachers on a priority basis. The state would create open spaces and protect all existing open spaces and hills within the city (2021–22 Budget Speech).
Amrit-GIG City:
A proposal to develop Guwahati as an integrated global city (Amrit-GIG City). The proposed Amrit-GIG city would be developed across 1,000 acres of land with complete planning (2022–23 and 2024–25 Budget Speeches).
Promises vs. Reality
If the conscious citizens of Guwahati were to analyze the promises made by the ruling party for the city’s development over the last ten years, they would see that most of these promises have vanished like bubbles. Promises to prevent Guwahati’s flash floods, reorganize the waste management process, increase green cover, establish parks, strengthen the public transport system, provide land pattas to the city’s landless, and solve the land issues of hill dwellers with a humanitarian approach—all have remained confined to mere announcements. Rather than covering every failure, we wish to present a picture of the promises and their implementation in just a few key areas.
Smart City
It can be said that the very foundation required to transform Guwahati into a ‘Smart City’ or an ‘Amrit Global City’ is absent today. Although the Central Government officially declared the conclusion of the Smart City Mission on March 31, 2025, most of the work under the Guwahati Smart City Mission project remains incomplete. Significantly, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Smart City Mission on June 25, 2015, work on this project in Guwahati did not even begin until 2021. In other major cities of the country, work started around 2016, but ‘Guwahati Smart City Limited’ was unable to spend the initial Rupees 395 crore received from the Union Ministry of Urban Development until 2021.
While Guwahati Smart City Limited claims to have completed various works worth Rupees 814.29 crore, most of these projects were only started after 2021. Works such as the Brahmaputra Riverfront Development, Integrated Traffic Management System (ITMS), introduction of electric buses, and light and sound shows at Gandhi Mandap and Sankardev Kalakshetra are said to be completed.
However, a different picture is painted by widespread inconsistencies and growing turmoil in traffic control despite the construction of multiple flyovers. Traffic in the Machkhowa–Fancy Bazaar area has increased significantly since the North Guwahati bridge opened. The main goal of the smart city project in Guwahati has already failed, as seen in the unplanned and unscientific ‘roundabout’ at Chandmari on the Dighalipukhuri–Noonmati flyover, which has turned the entire flyover into a new source of traffic bottlenecks.
The ITMS system remains ineffective due to the city’s narrow roads, the rapid increase in vehicles, and the lack of parking facilities. While Integrated Command and Control Centers (ICCC) were successfully established in twenty other cities, Guwahati has yet to implement this system in a complete and functional form. Under ‘Smart City Mission 2.0,’ Rupees 145 crore was allotted for waste disposal, but this money, released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, was returned unspent because the Guwahati Municipal Corporation identified an environmentally sensitive area for waste disposal.
Similarly, while Guwahati was selected under CITIIS 2.0 in March 2024 for waste recycling, the project has not been utilized to date. Due to poor planning and a lack of political integrity, most Smart City projects in Guwahati have failed. Citizens can best judge the actual effectiveness of water ATMs, super sucker trucks, solid waste management, and drinking water supply.
Drinking Water
The promise to provide drinking water to Guwahati residents has been made repeatedly. Yet, in 2026, nearly 70% of residents still depend on groundwater and expensive private water tankers. Although the Guwahati Water Board promised to complete all projects by December 2024, neither the South, Central, and North JICA projects (started in 2009) nor the ADB-funded South-East Guwahati water supply project and South-West projects (started in 2007) have solved the water crisis. Instead, residents are constantly affected by frequent pipe bursts that damage homes and disrupt lives, along with the constant digging of roads.
Public Transport
The question is: have the electric green buses introduced under the Smart City project provided affordable and fast transport to the common man? Or have residents become more dependent on private cars, commercial vehicles, and two-wheelers? A conductor of a ‘Green City Bus’ informed this columnist that most buses cannot even collect the daily amount they are required to pay to the authorities. Consequently, they are forced to wait for passengers like ordinary city buses, stop anywhere due to a lack of designated bus stops, and cannot move quickly due to the pressure of private vehicles.
Except for a few main roads, a city bus system has not been developed for other areas. Passengers in public four-wheelers or three-wheelers are packed inhumanely like cargo. The situation has reached a point where one cannot move in Guwahati without a personal vehicle. In narrow lanes, pedestrians are unable to walk due to the onslaught of vehicles. On these footpath-less and drain-filled roads, many have been injured, and some, while dreaming of a ‘Smart City,’ have even lost their lives. In a city without footpaths, the government and automobile companies seem to have forced everyone to buy a car. Instead of a strengthened public transport system, affordable and comfortable travel has vanished from Guwahati’s streets over the last decade.
Finally, thousands of crores of rupees have been ‘thrown into the water’ in the name of flood control over the past several decades. But instead of decreasing, the severity of floods has spread to new areas every year. Areas like Lakhra, Baragaon, and Beharbari in South Guwahati, which never saw floods before, now see their main national highways submerged in knee-deep water after a single spell of rain. Localities like Rukminigaon, Survey, and Panjabari remain underwater throughout the monsoon. Common people like us fail to understand why those running the government, who cannot solve even a fraction of the flood problem with their own innovation or technology, continue to sell dreams of building Singapore-style parks to the public.