“This is like turning a knife through our heart,” says Judith Almeida, the fiery activist from Colva who has been fighting her own personal battle to save Goa. Her ire arises from Goa being awarded the Best State Award at India Today State of the States Conclave 2018 in (hold your breath!) governance, tourism and economy. Irony also died a couple of deaths more with Goa being awarded the State showing the most improvement in environment and tourism sectors. The moral of the story is simple – you don’t need a functional Chief Minister to govern your state and yet your record in governance is acknowledged. You also can sell government bonds worth Rs 200+ crore every month to run your State and incur Rs 13000 crore debt and yet bag an award for the best run economy. And with beaches littered with garbage, your prime tourism property up for sale and state’s tourism economy heading South; you still can be numero uno in tourism. What next – Goans being awarded for being the best performing democracy for electing the people we do?
As Goa heads into yet another month of political whataboutery and governance tomfoolery, Goans cannot help but wonder if the absence of so many ministers and MLAs due to ill health is okay for political parties to pretend that everything is fine with government and governance, then why do we need a 11-member Cabinet or even a 40-member Legislative Assembly? After all as, Panchayat Minister (whose own Department failed to ensure that none of the village panchayats in Goa made a mark under Government of India’s Mission Antyodaya) who very proudly received these awards says, “It proved that we have a functional government,” makes Goa wonder whether what exactly constitutes a government?
Goa’s current government could be well summed up in Jammu & Kashmir’s Governor’s statement dissolving the Assembly as, “The impossibility of forming a stable government by the coming together of political parties with opposing political ideologies…whereas the experience of the past few years shows that with the fractured mandate that is there in the Assembly, it is not possible to form a stable government comprising of like-minded parties. The coming together of such parties in a grouping is nothing but an attempt to gain power rather than to form a responsive government.” Whither Goa’s ruling coalition but then this is what the current government has been all about. A marriage of convenience in which many a wolf wore sheep’s clothing. And the goalpost has now been shifted to December 11.
This newspaper had less than a month ago revealed how BJP was awaiting the outcome of elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram to decide Goa’s fate. BJP Goa’s State president’s deadline of December 11 (the day when results will be announced for those state polls) is not just a candy to warring coalition partners, restive opposition and a livid Goa but actually the most insensitive slap on Goa’s pride. BJP, along with its coalition partners Messrs MGP and GFP, has reduced the state into another colony of the electorate that should meekly toe its line and believe it when it says that all is well with State’s government.
Did Goa notice how each coalition member became an extension of the ruling majority BJP? From MGP (despite its PIL against the Congress MLAs turned BJP leaders) still willing to give BJP more time to the other coalition partner that seems to be knowing as much as BJP state president as to why he continues to believe in an ailing Chief Minister, the bandicoots of Goa’s opportunistic politics have turned bandits of Goa’s headless politicscape. Dissolution is the Waterloo that this ruling dispensation is terrified of but till then Goans can continue to live in a haze of grievous deception.
