here is a little less than a year to go before most of the municipal councils in Goa go to the polls. Fresh elections are due in October next year as the term of almost all of the councils – with the exception of Ponda and that of the Corporation of the City of Panaji – come to an end that month. This leaves little time for any council to now make a fresh start and change the course of the town, as practically any new formation at the helm of a council would get 10 months at the most to work. Given the speed the administration works at, this is almost negligible. Against this background, the imminent change of guard in Margao may serve little purpose except to have a new person at the helm of affairs, in a council where acrimony has risen to new heights.
Margao has a number of unresolved issues – the main, and in this there can be no debate, being the inability to find a solution to the garbage management. In May and June this year, the town was engulfed by the Sonsoddo issue, even as the smoke that arose from the fire in the garbage dump hung as a cloud over the neighbouring villages, the direction of the wind keeping it away from the town. Yet, this important issue did not dislodge the ruling panel, that emerged out of the fire and smoke rather unscathed, though somewhat scarred for not providing solutions to the issue. What fused together the Margao town councillors owing allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress is the procedural lapses in the proposed installation of a statue of Dr Jack de Sequeira at the Opinion Poll square.
There is the serious allegation that the minutes of the council meeting have been tampered with, and as a resultant fracas that took place at the council meeting, the chairperson Dr Babita Angle has announced her resignation. This is pure politics. Almost 52 years after the Opinion Poll and 40 years after Goa’s first Leader of the Opposition contested his last election, his name getting dragged into controversy that is not of his doing reflects on the manner in which politics in Goa is being played today. Dayanand Bandodkar and Sequeira sat on opposite sides of the well of the House and had divergent views on course that Goa had to take after its Liberation. The former campaigned for merger, the latter for retaining the Goan identity by remaining an Union Territory. Yet, they played a fair game in their political lives, something that cannot be said of today’s political parties.
Margao needs a garbage management solution. Margao needs a traffic plan. Margao needs parking facilities. Margao needs a bus stand. Margao needs all the houses and buildings connected to the sewage system. None of these issues have been resolved in the past four years. A statue of Dr Jack de Sequeira or a road named after former chief minister the late Manohar Parrikar will not solve any of these issues. The statues and the renaming of roads can come, but should not deflect attention from the main issues. Instead of wasting time on these the coucillors should concentrate on the issues that are pressing and that have delayed the town’s development.
Margao’s councillors have to aim at solving the problems afflicting the town, while keeping other issues on the back burner, if not like the growing Sonsoddo mound of garbage these too will fester to grow unmanageabale. The statue and the renaming of the road can wait, but there are other issues that cannot and so have to be tackled first. Whoever takes the reins of the Margao Municipal Council has to show that it is people’s issues that matter over politics.
