Congress hangover
Months after the work for laying the pipeline for the integrated sewarage system to Taleigao, Caranzalem and Dona Paula areas was undertaken and completed, many of the excavated public roads continue to resemble a war zone. Of course the project is still a long way from being tied up. Thousands of residential units are still to be connected to the pipeline and the support system, and pumping stations are yet in the planning stage. We like to believe we’re in the global spotlight; among the top 10 international destinations for the rich and famous. Yet in 21st Century Goa, a modern sewage system still eludes us. This obviously not from a lack of funds, since loans are easily available for infrastructural projects related to sanitation. It’s clearly more to do with the lack of accountability in our governments, and the current one, even after 19 months in the saddle, is still suffering from a Congress hangover.
Try driving for instance, from Mira Mar to Goa University via the Jack Sequeira avenue ~ or the popularly rechristened “Marine Drive” of Panjim. Once a smooth sail for all those new swanky SUVs, CRVs and sedans, the sewage excavation has left the roads in a state more suited to muscular mining trucks. How difficult, challenging, or costly, we might ask the government, is it to do a patch-up and retarring of a 3 km stretch of road when we’re being promised 43 newbridges, all within the span of the next three years and four months?
But it’s not just about road repairs. For all the impression that Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is a man of action, a leader raring to go, he appears far more hamstrung in running the current government, despite the comfortable numbers stacked up on his side, than his previous tenures that were marked by backroom adjustments with come-lately political allies. In fact, the Chief Minister’s refrain that he’s paying the price for an administration and police force corroded by previous governments is beginning to sound rather hollow.
For one, the government has not stopped deriding the NGO that took it to the Supreme Court over the mining scandal, holding the non-profit group responsible for its poor state of finances because mining royalty collection had to be suspended. So if we’re so cash strapped, why are ministers, MLAs, sarpanches, ZP members, babus and evenembedded journalists jetting around Europe at public expense? The “garbage” Euro tour is just the kind of story that makes a journalist’s day, despite Parrikar insisting that it is not a jamboree but an attempt to ensure that those who oppose garbage treatment plants at the grassroots are the ones sent on the tour so they can see for themselves that the plans, including technical, approved by the government are kosher. But the public is not buying this when it involves a crore of rupees from the public exchequer in the cause of buying the leadership some peace.
And even as the warring Calangute factions of the BJP ~ Michael Lobo on one side of the ring, Joseph Sequeira on the other ~ take a breather in an Italian piazza or perhaps in the Austrian Alps, back home on the tacky Calangute seafront the Rs 1.1 cr beach promenade project has been hit by a “funds crunch”. But that obviously has not stopped Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar and his cronies from notching up air miles. After the recent World Travel Mart in London, which was preceded by tourism shows in Australia and New Zealand, Parulekar has a Rs 17 cr budget in road shows and other international travel marts to run through.
