Living in a smart city that can't stay dry

I never thought I’d wake up every monsoon to the sound of rain and feel dread instead of comfort. Not because I dislike rain, I actually used to love it. But here in Guwahati, one downpour is enough to transform my city into an open-air swimming pool. And unlike the rooftop infinity pools shown in smart city advertisements, ours come with frogs, creepy looking insects, sewage, and despair.

Every year, I watch headlines boast about crores being spent to “modernize” our infrastructure. There’s always some new masterplan to prevent artificial flooding—some sleek government proposal, some tender, some model solution. But when the skies open even modestly, Guwahati drowns again. And I, like thousands of others, am left to wade through yet another cycle of watery chaos and government silence.

Take Zoo Road, RG Baruah road, Satgaon and the most popular 'sagars' (sea in Assamese) Chandmari, Anil Nagar, and Nabin Nagar which have always seen their front side of their roads filled with water every year. For nearly a year now, people walk through knee-deep water just to buy vegetables or send their children to school. The roads have disappeared under stagnant water, and the paths have become makeshift rivers. Google Maps might as well give up rerouting. It’s not a navigation issue; it’s a question of survival.

What’s even more maddening is how predictably this unfolds. Rain falls. Drains clog. Lakes like Silsako Beel spill over. And homes turn into aquariums. My neighbour once joked that he could start a fresh fish business from his flooded porch, having netted a couple of wriggling guests that swam in during the night. It was a laugh that hurt. Not because it wasn’t funny, but because it’s true. We’ve caught fish at our doorstep, shared our kitchens with frogs, and learned to deal with ugly looking slimy insects curling up in our bathrooms. Insects and frogs don’t ask for rent, but they live with us now.

The tragedy is deeper than mere inconvenience. These floods are not natural calamities, they’re man-made. They’re the product of short-sighted planning, unchecked urban sprawl, encroachments on natural water bodies, and political promises that evaporate faster than the water recedes. Every year, government officials conduct surveys and hold meetings, flashing blueprints of drain cleaning and embankment fortification. Yet nothing changes.

Sometimes I ask myself, what does it mean to live in a “smart city”? The state government never tires of parading Guwahati as one. But as I step out of my home, dodging puddles that hide open manholes, I wonder: is this what smart looks like? Is smartness only skin-deep, LED lights and footbridges, while the backbone of our city drowns in negligence?

There’s a strange, cruel irony in having a smartphone that tracks the rain while your actual home sinks into it. We've learned to adapt in ways that would impress survival experts, raising furniture on bricks, storing dry clothes in plastic bags, keeping emergency candles above ground level. We shouldn’t have to live like this.

The government calls it artificial flooding. But there’s nothing artificial about our suffering. It’s real, raw, and recurring. And the more they spend on projects that don’t work, the more we drown, not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, and economically.

I sometimes wonder if we’d all be better off enrolling in swimming lessons instead of paying taxes. Because clearly, survival in this smart city doesn’t come from policy, it comes from paddling.