If the 45 villagers of Sonshi, who took to the streets to try and stop mining transportation at great personal risk, which led them to the Colvale prison, are criminals, then shouldn’t those responsible for polluting the air, drying the wells and causing dust which makes village children fall sick, be viewed through the same prism?
Has Goa really changed so much? Here we have 45 absolutely innocent villagers, in jail for almost ten days for taking to the streets, to protest the daily choking and suffering of their children and themselves due to the dust of the mining trucks. The old ghost has indeed returned to Sonshi. It’s a cruel sense of déjà vu, when after a gap of three years, the resumption of mining has led to the same old issues, but this time it’s worse. Protests have led to days in jail, with their daily wages frozen. And by the way it so happens that they have been granted bail on payment of Rs 10,000 each or a total of Rs 4.5 lakhs. For them it is impossible to cough up Rs 10,000 each which is why they are still in jail.
As we write this, it is impossible to ignore the din around us of liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s mini arrest in London for a few hours, and his subsequent bail, as the Indian government hunts for him for frauding the nation of Rs 9000 crores and above. He may have lost his Kingfisher Villa in Goa, but still has his London mansion and has not spent a single minute behind bars for over two years.
Lest we digress, let’s move back to the plebeian world of Sonshi. It should be clear to politicians, the police and all other pseudo do-gooders, that an anguished protest over water and for clean air, isn’t good enough a reason to do this to these villagers. There has to be a way to sort this and a beginning can be made if the government shows heart.
This is what one of the fresh protestors, on the streets to free their arrested comrades said “The villagers were only demanding fresh potable water, pure air, employment and permanent doctor at their health centre but instead the police sent them (protesters) to jail.”
A meeting with mining companies two days ago, with the Deputy Collector Sattari, the Joint Mamlatdar, and the PSI, underscored one thing very very clearly. The issue of water and pollution are real and the mining companies are aware of it.
Hence it has been acknowledged that the villagers have a genuine reason to protest. The companies agreed to meet the demands for drinking water and doctors; installing green nets in mining area, covering trucks with tarpaulin, controlling speed limit, deploying security at road crossing points and avoiding traffic congestions. They also agreed to withdraw their proposal to purchase 117 additional trucks and agreed to follow the speed limit.
If these basic demands need to be extracted at a meeting after 45 villagers have been arrested, then what have we learnt from the mining ban and the directions of the Supreme Court. Mining hasn’t started in 2017, to take villagers back to the days of 2009-10.
And if it is agreed that each of the villagers concerns, for which they took to the streets to form a human chain to stop mining trucks, are indeed valid, the bail amount needs to be arranged and the cases against them withdrawn. Colvale jail is not the place for those demanding freedom from dust, pollution and water scarcity.
