Arwin Mesquita
It’s common knowledge what made Goa unique (at least used to and many things are changing now for the worse) i.e. the long stretches of clear/clean beaches, rich bio diversity, hills, clean water bodies/rivers, roads suitable for villages, acres of fields, clean air, a relatively low local population and not in the least the distinct Indo-Western identity and outlook of Goans. This in itself could attract a lot of genuine/premium/quality tourists which could earn huge revenue for the State.
It does not take any intelligence to be aware of this and also do develop progressive plans to have Goa develop in a manner, that serves our state the best and protects our environment, ecology and identity.
However, what is actually happening is the opposite, our short-sighted bird brain politicians are doing everything to destroy all aspects of Goa’s uniqueness ( mentioned above) and instead have plans to massively increase people coming to the state via industries that do not favour locals, no employment benefits for locals, many times unnecessarily widening of roads, destruction of hills/environment etc to benefit lobbies, covering water bodies, destroying fields, low cost housing and mega projects to un-necessarily bring in more people from outside the state; and so on.
Our pathetic politicians are only interested in destroying the land at will, to increase their personal wealth and copy/paste development plans from rest of India which does not suit Goa. Perhaps India in general should learn from the Chinese on the particular point as to how places they took over from the West are being managed i.e. Hong Kong and Macao. Did India take over Goa by force to improve it further or convert it into a filthy/polluted place and garbage dump as we now see the state turning to? One just has to see pictures of Goa pre and post-Liberation to see what I mean! It’s not surprising that many people are migrating to former colonial power; is this not telling us something?
One thing is clear is that our political class, generally cannot be trusted and many are becoming outrageous liars as we see lately where they actually proposed the heritages sites to the Central Govt. but now saying they were not aware of it. By knowing the latter as fact we have to act accordingly and coming back to my point we have to work to keep what makes Goa unique.
