Linking City with North Guwahati
CITYLIGHT
Jivraj Burman
Switzerland and Austria have the
number of ropeways no other
countries in the world has. There are ropeways in Switzerland which go up to the mind-boggling height of some snow-clad peaks of the Alps, across deep ravines and sharp escarpments, and some of them carry as many as thirty passengers per car. Tourists, sight-seers, skiers and other merrymakers regularly use them. Nearer home, Rajgir in Bihar also has a fairly long ropeway which takes tourists and the faithful to a Buddhist temple up on a hill. The temple has been built with the financial assistance of the Japanese government. (I may mention here in passing that a portion of the popular Hindi film of the Seventies, Dev Anand-Hema Malini starrer Johny Mera Naam was shot on this ropeway, a key tourist attraction of Rajgir.
However, I am not sure if there is any country which uses ropeways as a regular mode of transport to ferry people from one place to the other. This has occurred to me in the light of the fact that the Assam government has reportedly made plans to link Guwahati with North Guwahati by a ropeway across the Brahmaputra. The newspaper reports say that an agency has already done the preliminary survey for the project. It is all very good that Guwahati should have a direct link with its poor cousin North Guwahati from the heart of the city. That there are no such links at present is the reason why the citys its poor cousin has remained poor, so that it can do nothing but look wistfully from across the river at its wealthy cousin secure for itself all the riches. The Saraighat Bridge, which is Guwahatis, for that matter, all of South Kamrups, only link with the north bank, has not helped North Guwahati much to maintain a direct contact with Guwahati - in the manner that the Howrah Bridge has helped Howrah to do so with Kolkata - as the bridge has skirted the key areas of North Guwahati while taking on a road leading to Baihata. So, there is a need for a direct link between Guwahati and North Guwahati, especially because the citys capacity to accommodate people has now saturated to such an extent that any further accommodation of people will make it burst at its seams. To avoid such an eventuality, linking North Guwahati with the city is the only best alternative available now. But a ropeway to do so? Like me, many other concerned citizens have their reservations about the utility value of such a project. Why ropeway? Whose purpose does the government think the proposed ropeway will serve? And more importantly, how will it help North Guwahati, to say nothing about how will it help in making Guwahati de-congested? Is the proposed ropeway going to be merely a tourist attraction to ferry the faithful from Guwahati to the religious sites that North Guwahati abounds and bring in sightseers from North Guwahati to the city? If that is the objective, is it worth it to undertake such an expensive project to cater to the needs of a handful? If the objective is to make room for a breathing space in the city by de-congesting it and at the same time to give the much-needed economic boost to North Guwahati, then a ropeway is no solution. What is needed actually is a road bridge directly linking North Guwahati with the city. This, in fact, has been a longstanding demand of the North Guwahati residents. But all that they are going to get now is a ropeway to occasionally make pleasure trips to Guwahati. For their regular passage to and from Guwahati, they will have to continue to avail of either the ferry service or the bus service, making a long detour through Amingaon and Adabari as they have been doing all these years. Agreed, the State Government cannot raise the fund required for the road bridge on its own, but why cant it convince the Central Government about the urgency of such a bridge between Guwahati and North Guwahati? Our MPs have also failed in their duties in raising this demand in the Parliament.
CITYLIGHT
Jivraj Burman
Switzerland and Austria have the
number of ropeways no other
countries in the world has. There are ropeways in Switzerland which go up to the mind-boggling height of some snow-clad peaks of the Alps, across deep ravines and sharp escarpments, and some of them carry as many as thirty passengers per car. Tourists, sight-seers, skiers and other merrymakers regularly use them. Nearer home, Rajgir in Bihar also has a fairly long ropeway which takes tourists and the faithful to a Buddhist temple up on a hill. The temple has been built with the financial assistance of the Japanese government. (I may mention here in passing that a portion of the popular Hindi film of the Seventies, Dev Anand-Hema Malini starrer Johny Mera Naam was shot on this ropeway, a key tourist attraction of Rajgir.
However, I am not sure if there is any country which uses ropeways as a regular mode of transport to ferry people from one place to the other. This has occurred to me in the light of the fact that the Assam government has reportedly made plans to link Guwahati with North Guwahati by a ropeway across the Brahmaputra. The newspaper reports say that an agency has already done the preliminary survey for the project. It is all very good that Guwahati should have a direct link with its poor cousin North Guwahati from the heart of the city. That there are no such links at present is the reason why the citys its poor cousin has remained poor, so that it can do nothing but look wistfully from across the river at its wealthy cousin secure for itself all the riches. The Saraighat Bridge, which is Guwahatis, for that matter, all of South Kamrups, only link with the north bank, has not helped North Guwahati much to maintain a direct contact with Guwahati - in the manner that the Howrah Bridge has helped Howrah to do so with Kolkata - as the bridge has skirted the key areas of North Guwahati while taking on a road leading to Baihata. So, there is a need for a direct link between Guwahati and North Guwahati, especially because the citys capacity to accommodate people has now saturated to such an extent that any further accommodation of people will make it burst at its seams. To avoid such an eventuality, linking North Guwahati with the city is the only best alternative available now. But a ropeway to do so? Like me, many other concerned citizens have their reservations about the utility value of such a project. Why ropeway? Whose purpose does the government think the proposed ropeway will serve? And more importantly, how will it help North Guwahati, to say nothing about how will it help in making Guwahati de-congested? Is the proposed ropeway going to be merely a tourist attraction to ferry the faithful from Guwahati to the religious sites that North Guwahati abounds and bring in sightseers from North Guwahati to the city? If that is the objective, is it worth it to undertake such an expensive project to cater to the needs of a handful? If the objective is to make room for a breathing space in the city by de-congesting it and at the same time to give the much-needed economic boost to North Guwahati, then a ropeway is no solution. What is needed actually is a road bridge directly linking North Guwahati with the city. This, in fact, has been a longstanding demand of the North Guwahati residents. But all that they are going to get now is a ropeway to occasionally make pleasure trips to Guwahati. For their regular passage to and from Guwahati, they will have to continue to avail of either the ferry service or the bus service, making a long detour through Amingaon and Adabari as they have been doing all these years. Agreed, the State Government cannot raise the fund required for the road bridge on its own, but why cant it convince the Central Government about the urgency of such a bridge between Guwahati and North Guwahati? Our MPs have also failed in their duties in raising this demand in the Parliament.
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