Even as the fires in Tiracol are still burning, Tuem is the next village which is up against this government, whose Chief Minister is incidentally an MLA from the same taluka. In the world of real politic, powerful politicians make the mistake of antagonizing people but seldom do politicians end up making this mistake with their own voters or those in their backyard. Goa’s Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar has ended up doing exactly that.
First in Tiracol and now in Tuem, the Parsekar government finds itself in an open no holds barred, serious confrontation which has reached a point of no return. The people of both these villages are fighting their battles in court, when ideally they elected Parsekar – and indirectly this government – through a verdict in the people’s court.
The very fact that innocent common people of a land, have to fight for their land, their culture, their heritage and importantly their livelihoods, not against an alien force but against their very own, is the saddest occurrence in any democratic process. Ultimately the story of both the villages is the same. And the same may well be across countless villages in Goa. People have lost their land, through different methods, which they find either illegal or irregular or done in a manner where they have not been taken into confidence and duped. And in both these villages, these lands have been taken over for projects that the government is fully interested in.
In Tiracol, the government is treating the private project of Leading Hotels as a public interest project, given the manner in which the government has gone about giving it clearances. The bridge over the river Tiracol is being built by the government by taking a massive infrastructure loan to facilitate this particular project and not to enhance the livelihoods of the people of Tiracol whose lives are getting destroyed because of the Golf Course and villa project of Leading Hotels. In Tuem the villagers find their names being struck off Forms I and XIV, stripping off their land titles. While this decision was taken many years earlier in a different context, it was never implemented while the government continued to charge and accept lease rates for this land. Their land has been usurped for the Chief Minister’s pet project, an “Electronic City”. This project has been pushed with no due diligence, or public discourse. What it has achieved is that the government now has in its possession at least 6 lakh square meters of land which effectively belonged to the people. This real estate is now in the hands of the government.
One farmer Amarnath Naik, who had tenanted land, found the government literally moving into his land and digging it up to build an approach road. His trees have been chopped and his land taken away. And for his grave crime – in the eyes of the government – he was arrested for protesting against the government’s unfairness. He did not give up and petitioned the Governor. And there too he drew our blank (see our report on this on page 1).
Goa is crying out loud. The fight between commoners – and they are those who do not have money or political backing – and the powerful State is heart wrenching. And those on the other side of the fence are not merely the “government”. Corrupt panchayats and panch members, businessmen, major industrial houses are as much a part of the system which stands like a wall against the common man. All right thinking people of Goa must stand with the commoners and make this side as strong if not stronger because the common man can no longer hope for either mercy or justice. It has been left with no choice but to confront. And in these desperate times, confront they must. And confront they will.
