City: Guwahati

Farmers, drivers and street food sellers in Guwahati are the occupations most vulnerable to climate change impacts in the northeastern city, while doctors are the least vulnerable, found a study that blends society and science for clues that can aid urban planning. Global climatic models and climatic predictions fail to explain the impacts on a very small scale, challenging planners and decision-makers in providing location- and ecology-specific solutions. Plugging this gap by incorporating people’s voices – like this study by IIT-Guwahati has done – is especially necessary for cities like Guwahati that have rapidly and silently expanded, barging into eco-sensitive…

As rapidly-expanding Guwahati, northeast India’s largest metropolis, gears up to clean its air under the National Clean Air Policy (NCAP), a study suggests a cocktail of natural and man-made pollutants wafting through the air is tinkering with the city’s rainwater quality. Guwahati in Assam is among the 122 ‘non-attainment’ cities identified for implementing mitigation actions under the national policy, which means it does not meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Researchers said pinpointing critical sources of air pollution and their contributions to the problem are essential to crafting effective city and region-specific air pollution control plans. Connecting the dots between the origin of…

Six-year-old Bittu, a resident of By Lane 3 of Nabin Nagar in Guwahati, misses school frequently during the peak monsoon season. “My younger son Bittu recently suffered serious skin ailments after he got wet in the rains,” explained his mother Purnima Das, “When I took him to a neighbouring clinic, it was diagnosed that he was suffering from a kind of superficial fungal infection. The consulting doctor advised me not to let him come in touch with clogged rainwater. But our lane gets flooded every time there is a downpour. Hence, I do not let Bittu go to school during…

Guwahati, the gateway to the entire Northeast, is not just the most prestigious of Assam’s 14 Lok Sabha seats, but is also seen as an indicator of which way the rest of the North east’s 11 Lok Sabha seats go.  With the state ruled by the BJP, the 2019 Gauhati (as the parliamentary constituency is named) contest, where voting takes place on April 23, is likely to be a closely fought one between two prominent women of the state: film actor and TV personality Bobeeta Sharma, 52 for the Congress and Queen Ojha, 67, former mayor of  the city and…

Arshel Akhter, the newly-elected Bicycle Mayor of Guwahati, discovered his love for cycling as he explored his city on two wheels. Along with a healthy lifestyle, the software developer-turned-banker-turned-stocks investor found that with cycling came a supportive and active community of enthusiasts from across all professions and ages. Now his mission is to expand this community to include not just hobbyists but people across all walks of life as he works to invigorate cycling in his city. Arshel envisages a future where the coming generation will readily take to cycling without any apprehensions that prevail currently. “We need more cycling…