The outburst of people across the State against the creation of Planning and Development Authorities, triggered primarily post the creation of the Greater Panjim Planning Development Authority, has to be seen in the context of the past five years and not merely the past six.
The root of the issue lies in the parallel template of development created by government in power, to bypass Regional Planning to have alternative bodies and structures, with the purpose of clearing ‘impediments’ to construction, that any good Regional Pan will have. The Regional Plan 2021 was made absolutely ineffective for five years when it was supposed to be temporarily on hold. We have lost almost two decades of planning the State and utilising its land and spaces. The on hold 2021 plan, supposedly clearing projects based on common ground in RP 2001 and RP 2021, is not the way to plan the State. This is akin to constantly looking back when the vehicle of growth should be moving forward.
The uprising against PDAs is only but an acute manifestation of an angst which has been building up over the past five years and more. But the larger issue is not whether Goa needs PDAs or not. This question gets automatically settled or even becomes irrelevant when the State decides to bring all panning under the solitary ambit of Regional Planning with one plan governing all land management.
Once that happens, the division between urban and rural planning gets replaced by planning strictly according to the nature and needs of the area. So for instance, a comprehensive plan will recognise the intrinsic rural character of a village like Parra, but be practical enough to understand that parts of Porvorim cannot be a part of a panchayat area when it is almost completely urbanized.
Another drawback of adhoc and haphazard planning is that different policies of the government which back heavily on land utilisation are in the draft stage, and in a state of non completion. How can there be any serious Regional Panning without dovetailing the tourism policy, the IT policy, the start-up policy and yes a real estate policy. It is only when these are frozen, after detailed public discussions, can there be a serious and accurate projection of land planning. What is happening to a large extent is that when work and projects need to commence as a part of different policies, there is a mismatch between the land availability as per the requirement of projects and locations and the plan of the day. And we have an ironic situation where we actually do not have an official plan of the day.
The PDAs therefore, to stretch the argument further, cannot be an answer to the Regional Plan, in areas where the RP still exists or had existed till the recent past. But to argue that there should not be a planning structure at the centre with all planning decentralized, cannot be a black and white argument. De-centralised and grassroots planning too has to flow from a state-wide plan for which a state-wide planning body is needed. But this again will work under a one state one plan formula, where the needs of urban planning as well preserving and protecting Goa’s orchards, hill-slopes and farms can be dovetailed.
Above all, the current public unrest has to go into the political accounting books of the past five years and not merely now, with the absolutely non-negotiable understanding that holistic one plan development has to be carried out for the Goa we want.
