Goa lives in its villages. Today’s cities were former villages. Even Panjim was a ward of the community village or comunidade of Taleigao. It is in these villages that authentic Goan life and ethos still exists. Goan village communes are the most ancient heritage institutions of Goa and need to be preserved as world heritage because their existence flourished only in Goa and legally exist only in Goa. The people of a village know each other closely, they care for each other’s needs, It is a life lived in community.
Many of our Goan villages have their special characteristics of identity: Like in a former sugarcane village of Sallgaokars they were known as foxes, Parra was known for its watermelons, Jua for ladyfingers and so on.
Although there are many villages in Goa I want to focus on the village where I was born and brought up and holds a very important place among the villages of Goa. It is the village of Jua, named from 1575 after its church St. Estevam. Eminent personalities like Dr Miguel Caitano Dias, Fr Leandro Da Rosa, Angelo Da Fonseca, Dr Olivinho Gomes and Fr Bismarque Dias were all sons of Jua. Jua was an evergreen agrarian village known as Green Island- “Ilha Verde”.
Being below the sea level and consisting of seven small and big islands our ancestors had to work hard to unify these seven islands into one village by surrounding it with bunds-a work of centuries and centuries. It is in this village that the history of “Ganv-Purush” alerting the Goankars about the impending breaches of bunds in the monsoon floods and inviting them to watch over these bunds take its discourse. The late Dr Olivinho Gomes has historicized the “Ganv-purush” of Jua. There also runs a story that the system of sluice gates or “manos” was devised originally by the people of Jua although I have no documentation about the same. But one thing is true, our ancestors as well as those of Malar (Sao Matias) were experts at constructing bunds and repairing them so much so that they were taken to construct bunds in other villages. The families of Vangor of Furtados were “furtados” meaning robbed or uprooted from Jua and taken to Pilerne for this purpose and made gaokars of Pilerne. Similarly the Menezes of Malar were taken to Colvale to repair their breached bunds. For this noble work of saving their bunds they were granted the title of “zonnkars” or Colvale village.
Identical stories may be running in many villages of Goa and Goans must work for the preservation of their agricultural villages at all costs, to safeguard them from transforming into concrete jungles.
The reported news that around 58 villages of Goa are going to be urbanised according to the 2011 census is not so good news. Also the Nationalisation of Goan rivers is going to play havoc with the bunds, fish and the river ecology. Goans must at all costs fight to preserve the characteristics of our goan villages.
The sad news about Jua village is that a few people of our village who have not understood what community spirit means are working against the interests of the village for selfish interests and thus ally themselves with the destroyers of the community and therefore the majority have to suffer.
In the last four years we are witnessing this wanton destruction of our village in several forms: khazan bunds being converted into roads, 10mt road cutting through the Church compound just touching the church doors, a low lying area being converted into playground, some constructions in the paddy fields and water ponds (hondes) being filled with mud, and the biggest destructive project of 116 bunglows in Tolto under IPB by a Mumbai developer. Tolto is the only green area or forest in the village considered to be the lung of the village. While our village people have no land available within the village to raise a decent house and therefore are forced to migrate to the neighbouring villages around Marcela, these builders are hell bent on destroying our heritage villages with the majority of outsiders sometimes outnumbering the original villagers and the Government cooperating under the banner of investment. Has not our village invested so much money in the banks? A much bigger amount than these promoters are bringing in to the government?
The village of Jua has a history of long term investment in the banks amounting to crores of rupees from the hard earned remittances of seamen and other villagers. The former Chief Minister, Pratapsingh Rane had highlighted the village of Jua as the highest per capita income of Goa for several years. Was not all this income utilised by the Government and other agencies for development projects in Goa? The same property being dealt with is full of bio-diversity and recently it was set on fire in several places so that the bio-diversity migrates to other places and the villagers had to call the fire brigade and extinguish the fire. This village is fighting a number of cases in the Green Tribunal against its destruction by turning the bunds into motorable roads, wasting tax payers money. Recently the Green Tribunal has ordered that the bunds be restored to its original form.
We hope that Goans will awaken themselves to fight against the destruction of their villages and that the village characteristics of Jua will be preserved at all costs by all those responsible for the common good of the village.
