A Vision for Guwahati

I wrote a long article in English on a vision for Assam's largest city. Asomiya Pratidin has been kind enough to translate and publish it in a serialised format over 3 weeks. Here's the English original.

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The recently-released State of the World Population Report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), reveal several interesting statistics. It took until 1800 for the world population to reach 1 billion. But thereafter it was a fast climb: 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion on 1959, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987 and 6 billion in 1999. Currently, we are have just crossed the 7 billion mark. Future projections show continued increase, but with a steady decline in the growth rate.

All along human history, people have been migrating from rural to urban areas, making cities bigger and bigger agglomerations of habitation and centres of economic activity. Rome was said to be the first million-plus city, but today's megapolises would make the Rome of yore look like an outgrown neighbourhood. The Tokyo-Yokohoma urban agglomeration, for instance, holds an estimated 36.69 million people (bigger than the total population of Assam). The National Capital Region (NCR) of India—comprising Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad and Bahadurgarh—contains about 22.63 million people.

The other piece of significant news is that for the first time in human history more people are living in towns and cities than in villages.

India is Urbanising

As the country is urbanising, so is Assam, but not at the same rate. The Provisional Census Report, 2011, states that of India's 1.21 billion population, 377 million people (31.16%) live in “urban areas”. Included in this list of urban areas are 4041 recognised towns with their own urban local bodies (ULBs), as well as 3894 “census towns”. The census towns are basically out-grown villages with a population of at least 5000 people in the preceding census, with at least 75% of male main working population engaged in non-agricultural activities, and a population density of at least 400 persons per sq km.

Of these 4041 statutory towns, 468 have a population of more than 1 lakh and are categorised as Class I Towns. The point to note is that 264.9 million persons, constituting 70% of the total urban population, live in these Class I Towns. Or to put it in a national perspective, 22% of India live in medium and big towns/cities.

Historically, Assam has been one of the least urbanised state of India. Just after independence, while the urbanisation rate in India stood at 17.29%, it was a lowly 4.29% in Assam. In fact the population of Guwahati itself was only about 43 thousand. While currently there are at least 7 urban agglomerations (statutory towns + census towns + outgrowth areas)—Guwahati, Silchar, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Nagaon, Tinsukia and Tezpur—that have a population of more than a lakh each, the growth of most of these towns barring Guwahati has been sluggish. The experience of Guwahati on the other hand has been anything but, specially after the capital of Assam shifted from Shillong in 1972.

For the next two decades, as the Government of Assam consolidated its administration in Guwahati-Dispur and a sprinkling of industries began to sprout on the outskirts of the city, it became a magnet for all kinds of migrants from both within and outside the state. Very few Indian cities have had the kind of population growth, at least in percentage terms if not in absolute value, that Guwahati saw between 1971-91. While the rate of decadal doubling has tapered off, Guwahati's population gains still remain impressive.

This has undoubtedly led to some major pressures on the city's infrastructure. A corrupt State Government combined with an ineffective civic administration have ensured that disruption in civic services are more routine than being remotely accidental.

The result is a general hand-wringing both in the media and in private conversation, with the regular questions being: in which direction is Guwahati heading? How big should it become? Should it become an industrial town, or should all industries be kept away? What about infrastructure growth?

Unfortunately the nature of TV-led public debates being what they are, one can hardly expect any answers to emerge. So today we take a break from the regular paradigm of problem-solving, and instead of looking 'inside' for an answer look to the world 'outside' for the insights it has to offer. And central to that inquiry is the question about the role of the city?

Role of the City

Most people view a city as an agglomeration of humans, habitats and economic activities, put together either by design or the the natural processes of history. But cities can also be huge centres of economic value creation and hubs for work, leisure, entertainment, culture, education and intellectual activity. Therefore some people see cities as the primary building blocks of the 21^st century society. Invested with immense intellectual capital, armed with huge economic might, cities, they say, would shape politics and set the global agenda of tomorrow.

A McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report provides the statistics to go with the sentiment. The report found that today only 600 cities, home to about 20% of the global population, generate about 60% of world's GDP. The promising news is that 70% of these 600 cities are located in emerging economies like India, China, Brazil and South Africa.

They also found another interesting fact: given the way some of the smaller cities are growing, they would replace many of the incumbent in the current 600 list. 'Over the next 15 years, the makeup of the group of top 600 cities will change as the centre of gravity of the urban world moves south and, even more decisively, east. One of every three developed market cities will no longer make the top 600, and one out of every 20 cities in emerging markets is likely to see its rank drop out of the top 600. By 2025, we expect 136 new cities to enter the top 600, all of them from the developing world and overwhelmingly (100 new cities) from China. These include cities such as Haerbin, Shantou, and Guiyang. But China is not the only economy to contribute to the shifting urban landscape. India will contribute 13 newcomers including Hyderabad and Surat.'

Apart from providing better habitats, all these cities are home to world-class research facilities, academic institutions, cultural centres, transportation hubs, and manufacturing/production zones that operate synergistically to create great products and services. In short, cities are nurturing spaces for the advancement of humanity. So where do we locate a vision for Guwahati in this narrative?

I often wonder if anybody has envisioned Guwahati not just as a city, but as a living space that embodies the spirit of the Assamese people? I wonder if anybody has thought of Guwahati as a nurturing cocoon, an intellectual platform to bring on board the best and the brightest of our talent and set them to create the finest we have to offer to the world?

My gut feel is that we don't see Guwahati this way. In my conversations with ordinary people, I come across a builder's Guwahati which is a real estate goldmine that is open to be exploited till there is nothing more left to be gleaned; I come across a squatter's Guwahati which dangles the prospect of unlimited housing minus the security; I come across a cynic's Guwahati where the world can be damned as long as sewage water does not enter the drawing room. But I don't encounter the visionary's Guwahati that attempts to be a showcase of our goodness and talent.

Envisioning Guwahati

The North-East has been a frontier in more sense than one. Hemmed in on all sides by fiercely belligerent neighbours, this landlocked area of wild hills and delirious rivers, joined to the mainland by a narrow sliver of land, sadly forms only the periphery of the Indian mindspace.

A couple of years back there was much noise about India's 'Look East Policy', and how the North-East could play the role of a gateway to South-East Asia. In fact Rajiv Sikri, the then secretary-east in the external affairs ministry, went as far as announcing in Guwahati that the policy “envisages the North-East region not as the periphery of India, but as the centre of a thriving and integrated economic space linking two dynamic regions with a network of highways, railways, pipelines, transmission lines criss-crossing the region.” His hope, as was quoted in newspaper articles, was that it would be possible some day to drive from Calcutta via Dhaka, or from Guwahati, to Yangon and Bangkok in three or four days, and that trains and buses would carry “millions of tourists, pilgrims, workers and businessmen in both directions?” It was a brilliant vision then, and it rightly caught the imagination of the informed public.

However that initial ardour seemed to have cooled, and we find the North-East where it was seven years back. Nowadays nobody talks of the Look East Policy any more, but I think we should not let that initial vision fade away. If Assam and the North-East are to remain on India's map and also uppermost on its mind, I think it has to be on the basis of pure economics. The battle today is for relevance. The stewardship of an upwardly mobile India in an increasingly globalising world would be vested in its economically-powerful states, not in its laggards.

Therefore let me propose a big, hairy, audacious, goal (BHAG) for Guwahati: In the next 1 decade, we would be a megacity of 10 million people, with a GDP of Rs 100 thousand crores.

Is this achievable? Today Assam's 31 million people, with the current set of infrastructure and economic opportunities, produce a GDP of a little below Rs 93 thousand crores. Tomorrow, can we create the right economic opportunities in Guwahati whereby the per-capita productivity of the city's workforce go up by three time? Possible!

Operationalising the Vision

The BHAG described above cannot be achieved organically. Rather each piece of the jigsaw has to be incubated separately and simultaneously. I am aware that regional strategies are formulated after detailed studies of market potential, resource availability, competency profiling, etc, but I am no means to undertake these. Yet, let me articulate some random thoughts as the starting point for future explorations.

Think of a Guwahati whose municipal boundaries extend up to Khetri in the east, Rani and Chaygaon in the West, and Baihata Chariali in the north. Each of these areas would be a planned mini-city with offices, homes, parks, educational institutions, shopping malls, and built around a production/service cluster.

Let's say we build a education cluster in North Guwahati, near the site of the present Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Now imagine a high street where you have a Indian Institute of Management (IIM), a Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), a National Law School (NLS), a National Institute of Design (NID), a National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), and, given the right impetus, there is no reason why there would not be academic synergy. Want cutting-edge industrial design? IIT and NID could collaborate on it. Want a solid cyber-law regime? Get IIIT and NLS to work together. Want to upgrade the quality of local manufacturing? Bring together quality experts from IIT and IIM.

Let's think of a health cluster near Rani. Set up a All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and give 25 acres each to the top private healthcare players in the country: Apollo, Max, Fortis, etc. There is enough of a patient population in the North-East to warrant these big players to come. There are enough Assamese doctors working around the world to come and staff these facilities.

Let's visualise an automated multi-modal transportation and supply-chain cluster between Amingaon and Azara, where goods are stored in appropriate warehousing facilities and easily transferred between road, rail, boats and air crafts for forwarding to other destinations.

Let's imagine a biotechnology, drug-discovery and drug-manufacturing cluster near Sonapur. Partner with the Government of India's Department of Science & Technology (DST) to create a first-of-its-kind Indian Institute of Biotechnology, work with the North Eastern Development Finance (NeDFI) to create a Biotech Venture Fund, and create a techno-park for biotech start-ups.

In a knowledge-driven world where markets are global, consumers demand the best of quality, and today's performance no longer guarantees tomorrow's success, we would be constantly evaluated on our ability to remain the best at whatever we do.

High-density Guwahati, Low-density Assam

Why is it important to build a high-density Guwahati and a low density rest-of-Assam? A report in the Indian Express last year stated that 'the total area under rice cultivation in Assam has been shrinking over the past decade. From 26.46 lakh hectares in 2000-2001, it dwindled to 24.84 lakh hectares in 2008-09'. The report quoted the then Agriculture Minister Pramila Rani Brahma as saying “Establishment of industrial estates and other institutions have cut into paddy fields. Assam does not have enough fallow land, and thus every time something new comes up, it has to be at the cost of agricultural land.” At the rate at which building activity is on in both villages and towns of Assam, there is no doubt that our agricultural land will only deplete.

I carried out another calculation. The Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao districts being hill areas have the lowest population, but the largest areas. I took the population of Assam minus the population of these two hill-districts, and divided it by the area of Assam minus the area of these two districts, to arrive at the population density in the plain-districts of Assam. I found the average population density of our plain-districts to be 474 persons per sq km, much higher than the national average of 382!

The area covered by the Brahmaputra river as a proportion of the total area of the state is disproportionate, when compared to other states and their river systems. Now if I were to continue my earlier exercise and calculate the population density of Assam after subtracting the area covered by the Brahmaputra, the figure would rise even higher. In short, Assam is a very crowded place indeed!

As we visualise a future for Guwahati, we need to ask ourselves whether we want a Assam that can meet its own food requirements. If yes, we necessarily need to build a high-density Guwahati and a low-density rest-of-the-state. The other thing in favour of a high-density urban zone is that the cost of providing municipal amenities becomes all that much lower.

Reality Check

It is quite possible that I could be criticised for articulating a vision that borders on fantasy, describing a utopia that has no linkage with the present reality. But my counterpoint is: didn't all rags-to-riches billionaires dream outrageous things when they did not have a penny in their pocket? Doesn't all creation presupposes a 'nothing'?

This is not to gloss over the present state of affairs in Guwahati or to suggest that its current municipal troubles are not significant, but I strongly believe that given adequate political will they are easily surmountable. We all know the facts: only 25% people in Guwahati get piped drinking water and that too for a few hours each day, even a small shower leads to artificial flooding in most parts of the city, garbage routinely piles up on the streets, sewage is dumped untreated in the Brahmaputra, there are few parks or public spaces, and air pollution is endemic.

But the Indian experience has been that given adequate political will even the unthinkable becomes possible. Hyderabad used to be just another state capital till the mid 90s. Then N Chandra Babu took over as the Chief Minister and we all know how Hyderabad changed. Surat used to be the dirtiest city in India. Then a came along a Municipal Commissioner called SR Rao and the city transformed into one of the cleanest city in India in just 18 months! Residents in Badlapur, in Maharashtra's Thane district, used to get irregular water supply. Today all residents get water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

Such stories of transformation are many. I am not suggesting that we would become a Hong Kong or Singapore in the next 5-10 years, but I would definitely argue that given the right leadership we could get there. The question is: are we prepared to demand the best? Are we prepared to throw out the crooks and embezzlers amongst the political class, and bring in committed and capable people to run our public institutions. A functioning democracy presupposed an enlightened electorate, and this is something the citizens of Guwahati need to think about.

In the next two installments of this column, I'll articulate some ideas to cope with the present municipal challenges, as well as outline the governance mechanisms required to run the 21^st century Guwahati.