By Biswajit Dutta
As we bid farewell to another year of struggle living in Shillong and get ready to welcome a new year, a statement that rings in our ears is, “Where did we go wrong?”. Why did Shillong turn into what it is today? While we continue to blame each other and try to find fault in the work of others and clamour about our jurisdictional rights and powers, we fail to realize that in the meantime the city of Shillong has grown much beyond its limits and continues to expand like an organism and that there is no real boundary which demarcates our localities, our city waste and our city infrastructure. As we end the year and look back there seems to be very little reason to rejoice. Things have only gone from bad to worse.
Despite efforts to make Shillong Smart and beautiful, traffic has become worse, footpaths and roadside spaces taken over by hawkers and vendors, parking is nightmarish, the water supply is in a state of fluid, waste collection and disposal throwing up more garbage than solutions, sanitation leaving a stink everywhere and the state of our rivers, streams and drains a disgrace to our city. The skyline is changing from an idyllic hill town skyline of pine forests and pitched roofs to a skyline of jagged concrete squares and rectangles. After 50 years of our statehood, if we continue to live in a state of denial and keep on finger-pointing at each other, there will not be much left of Shillong to live in.
The question that arises is why things went so bad. The reasons are not very far to see, there is a total lack of coordination among the multiple agencies that claim authority over the city. Although everybody is playing its part and efforts are being made, coordinated and concerted efforts have been lacking. Why are we yet to get ourselves a civic body to manage the civic needs or a Planning and Development Agency for the long-term planning and implementation of the infrastructure facilities of the entire city? How long can we flog the Shillong Municipal Board whose jurisdiction covers little more than 10 per cent of the city area? Systematically we have starved that institution of its funds, taken away its assets, made it dependent on the state government and turned it into a white elephant. It is today a redundant institution with the sole function of garbage management.
The same is true of MUDA. Although MUDA was set up for the planning and development of Shillong and other towns and cities, today it is rediscovering the wheels in the small confined municipal area of Shillong. Whatever little regulatory function on safe building activity that it was doing has also been taken away from it. The need of the hour is that citizens of Shillong, the state government, the District Council and our Dorbars to have the courage to discuss and build up a consensus as to how best to go forward and manage Shillong’s problems instead of remaining stuck on jurisdictional issues and self rights. We have to look beyond our local issues to see the future of Shillong Urban Agglomeration.
Why can’t Shillong have a civic body covering the Greater Shillong area? Give it adequate powers. Call it by whatever name you want, have a state-centric municipal act, suited to our conditions and represent members in whatever way you want, elected or nominated. It is extremely demeaning when even for a complaint of garbage or water supply, or sanitation for that matter, one has to call up the MLA or the Rangbah Shnong. Although they have been doing this yeomen service for many many years, sadly this may not be the role for which they were elected by the locality. There has to be a civic representative for every locality responsible for the same. The piecemeal approach is not going to work.
Parallelly there should be legislation for a Planning and Development Agency for the Greater Shillong area including the New Shillong Township area. It is alarming to see villages around Shillong growing rapidly into towns and urban centres without any regulation or controls in place. Time and again we have heard of Town Committees being set up for the new towns but sadly, neither is there the expertise, resources or wherewithal to constitute and run the same. In such a situation, new legislation to set up a development agency for the entire city headed by a professional and consisting of representatives of all stakeholders in the city primarily to draw up infrastructure development plans and execute the same, is essential. Such an agency could also be given the responsibility of distribution and management of water supply and sewerage of the city.
Although the problems of Shillong appear insurmountable and things seem to be turning from bad to worse, there is always hope and things can improve if we set aside our petty differences and our rights for the general benefit of the citizens and the city we love.
(The writer is Retired Director, Urban Affairs now a citizen of Shillong)