When Power Passes, City Waits: The Other Side Of PM Modi’s Assam Visit

For two days, Assam played host to power. There were convoys slicing through barricaded roads, cultural grandeur at Sarusajai, foundation stones laid with precision, and promises of a better-connected future. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit projected authority, ambition and scale. But as the motorcade moved, Guwahati stood still.

On Saturday, the city learned, once again, what a VIP visit means in practice. The roadshow from the NH-17 roundabout to Azara, followed by the Prime Minister’s journey to Sarusajai, turned Guwahati’s arteries into parking lots.

Saraighat Bridge froze. Jalukbari choked. Lanes that usually carry the city’s pulse became corridors of waiting. “I kept watching the clock more than the road,” said a daily commuter stuck on the bridge for over an hour. “There was no way forward, no way back.”

But the most striking absence that day was not movement, it was transport. Bus stops across the city stood crowded yet useless. No buses came. “There was nothing,” said another commuter. “When buses disappear, the poor walk or pay.”

Sunday offered only partial relief. A handful of buses reappeared and traffic loosened marginally, but the message was unmistakable: normal life would return only after power moved on. By morning, the Prime Minister had. In Kaliabor, the narrative shifted from inconvenience to infrastructure. At the Mouchanda field, PM Modi addressed a public meeting and laid the foundation stone for a 35-kilometre elevated corridor through Kaziranga National Park, a Rs 6,957-crore project aimed at protecting wildlife while easing one of Assam’s most dangerous highways. Two Amrit Bharat Express trains were flagged off, symbols of speed, connectivity and promise.

Yet even in Kaliabor, the pattern repeated itself. As the Prime Minister’s programme got underway, the national highway remained choked, with hundreds of vehicles stranded in long queues. For residents and travellers alike, development once again arrived alongside delays, diversions and long waits on the road.

These are not small achievements. They matter. They will shape Assam’s future.

And yet, development announced from a podium cannot erase the reality lived on the streets. For Guwahati, and for Kaliabor, the visit exposed a familiar contradiction: progress that moves forward by forcing daily life to pause.
The deeper issue lies not with the visit itself, but with how cities are governed during such moments. Security is essential. Dignity is equally so. In Assam’s urban and semi-urban spaces over the past two days, both were treated as if they could not coexist.

Urban systems collapsed in unison. Traffic management failed to anticipate volume. Public transport vanished without explanation. Communication was an afterthought. A city reveals its governance not during celebrations, but during disruption. Over these two days, Guwahati revealed how fragile its everyday systems remain.

If development is meant to make life easier, it cannot repeatedly arrive by making life harder. A future built on elevated corridors and faster trains must also be built on better planning, empathy and civic sense.
Because when power passes and the city waits, it is not just time that is lost. Trust is too.

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