IAS Diaries Part 15 - Namami Brahmaputra

I still remember those days of UPSC preparation when I had just started up with my Geography portion for General Studies. We were doing rivers and when we came to the eastern frontiers, we encountered the mighty Brahmaputra. Merely reading the facts and figures detailing its gigantic spread gave me goose bump. How could a river be so broad? Why not call it a sea then, like the Caspian one? May be they are simply exaggerating. As I write this blog from my room in Circuit House Tezpur, I can see that vast expanse from where I am sitting, endless and eternal. They weren’t exaggerating, not at all.

After spending considerable time in the state you are bound to realize the immense River Tourism potential the place has which unfortunately remains untapped. We must build world-class River Cruise circuits, take up River front beautification projects in various districts and initiate steps to conserve our River Dolphins. It’s good to see that at least we are now talking about all these and the ideas are being deliberated in various circles. One such step in this direction was Namami Brahmaputra.

The conceptualization of Namami Brahmaputra is based on the idea of Namami Gange, an initiative widely known across the country. It was pertinent that a similar initiative must be taken up for celebrating the spirit of our lifeline Brahmaputra. Thus was conceived the idea of this river festival. It was then decided that the same would be celebrated in all the 21 districts through which the river Brahmaputra flows and the celebrations would be at the same time. And thereafter started a string of activities culminating to the festival which was celebrated from 31^st March’17 to 4^th April’17.

The planning of this event started several months ago at the time of our joining the districts. At that time it occurred to us why these deliberations are being made so early on as the event was scheduled only in March end. But after the organization of the event, everyone is on the same page that such mammoth events do require immense planning which must start way before the event. The entire event in all the districts was to be organized and planned by the respective Deputy Commissioner's Office. What followed was a marathon of Video Conferences, Committee meetings and Brain-storming sessions culminating to this grand event.

This river festival was to celebrate the spirit of Brahmaputra in various ways – cultural events, ethnic food, beach sports etc – basically everything somehow related to this lifeline of Assam. And ergo, it was an excellent opportunity to promote local tourism. We came up with a small booklet on Tezpur Tourism which had everything one would want to know and since distributing these booklets here in Tezpur would not have made any difference we decided to send and distribute all such materials to the tour operators in Guwahati. As when people plan to tour Assam, their entire itinerary revolves around the capital.

Tezpur lies on a tourist circuit which is very famous and includes places like Tawang and Bomdilla. But it is mostly used as a Transit location where people put camp to rest because the tourism potential of Tezpur is unexposed. There are several places in Tezpur itself to engage the tourist for two full days. On this note, we roped in some local entrepreneurs to arrange for one-day “Tezpur Tours”, something which is still continuing even after the festival. We all knew that we won’t be getting many tourists from outside in this first edition of this festival as it takes time for a new concept to evolve and spread its wings. Perhaps down the line we would see this river festival strengthen and become a rage like the Horn Bill festival.

One of the events on our list for the festival was the Marathon, well it was not the usual full length one, more of a fun-run thing. And I was glad that the entire responsibility was given to me courtesy my history. We decided to make it a grand event with cash prizes and to conduct it in a professional manner. The district sports office and all their staff played a vital role for the organization and successful culmination of the event. The endpoint of the race was decided as Jahaj Ghat which is the most famous ghat in Tezpur. The race started from the exterior of the city, breaching the interiors and finished in the heart of Brahmaputra thus paying a symbolic tribute

Due to the immense response received by the people of Tezpur, we had to restrict the entries to a certain number as we did not have the finances to handle such a large request. For the safe conduct of the race, a traffic plan was prepared in coordination with the traffic police personnel. To ensure proper medical aid, a team was identified to be stationed at the race locations in coordination with the Joint Director, Medical Services in the district. For the first time perhaps, I felt more joy in promoting the idea of running as I watched participants reach the finish line all proud and drained. And at the end, I realized that even organizing a marathon is as tiring and challenging as running one. Perhaps we burn even more calories in the former.

Another part where I was deeply involved was the overall organization of sports event during the festival. We thought that since it was a river festival it would make more sense to have beach football, beach vollyball and beach kabbaddi. And this eventually became the highlight of our festival. We received tremendous response and participation from several institutions which includes schools, colleges, Armed forces etc. And here also we had to restrict the number of entries as we neither had the time nor the resources to manage such large number of teams. The audience was also huge in number and all the games attracted huge crowds. We also played an exhibition football match- District Administration Vs Sports Association – wherein I tried to defend to my last breath but only to end up in a humiliating defeat. A great game it was.

And then there were the culturals every evening. One is amazed to see the cultural variety and talent that this place has. And more than that it is ingrained in all the people here. It is rather a inseparable part of their lives. The performance arenas were circled with stalls of ethnic food. It is in those times, when you are among people, music and good food, that you wonder, this is enough. We do not need anything more to be happy. Do hell with the rat race. This was only the first edition of the river festival and I hope that it evolves even stronger every coming year. And if you happen to plan a trip to Assam someday, just check when is the next edition of Namami Brahmaputra!