Election results are out! For a couple of days, it felt like there were Narkasurs set to be burned with high decibel trance music, ear shattering firecrackers and the entire main road in some key areas blocked by voters of the winning candidate. The same individuals and couples were re-elected. Some by a slim margin, some by a large one. No concern about their criminal records or notoriety. But what can we say when we ourselves have become a community of ill morals, compromised values fraught with corrupt practices?
Today if one has to get an admission in schools, there is a donation mandated and a price for a seat. To get into college, there is a similar practice. To get a job in any government department, people are often considering the oft taken path of bribing their way through. Pump houses in fields are being built larger than the permissible 3 X 3 square metre area. Why? Because money was distributed for votes and therefore the power it wields allows one to do as one pleases. Free water is being sold to gated communities because these are often guzzlers of resources and huge generators of waste. With food too there is adulteration and over pricing. Our roads are in a mess all year round but on the eve of elections! Our departments that offer services to the public are poor in the way they cater to the needs of the civil society. Citizens have to visit over days to get birth/death certificates, building construction licences, repair approvals, etc. It is known that if money is offered the job can be done in a day or two. Land is becoming scarce. Open spaces are getting converted to building and commercial land use. Agrarian bowls like in Pissurlem have become barren over the years. Greenfield airport projects are implemented at the cost of the land and livelihood of the local villagers.
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Nature and Goa’s environment has been completely ravaged over the years, most visibly during the pandemic. Massive hill cutting, land filling or sewage disposed in fields, vacant lands, wetlands and uncultivated lands. Development projects to the detriment of the environment, decisions to implement projects in eco sensitive areas and such have all been taken during the pandemic taking advantage of the fact that there would be limited public participation in decision making. So often we hear of protests and a call in solidarity against tree cutting, dumping of mud in fields, dumping of mud along road sides, building projects in pristine lands where there is massive destruction-cutting of all vegetation and flattening of hills. When these remain unaddressed, when the government has not heard the voice of the people to protect their land and livelihood and when the same government gets re-elected, it gets emboldened to cause more destruction or environmental injustices as in the past.
And this is why the scene that all of us witnessed on the day of the election results was one of the same monster rearing its head. But when we have joined hands in this corruption of the soul, we will see nothing wrong nor will we be able to fathom the environmental injustices of the future. Today as we were returning from our farming routine in the Taleigao fields with students of the Community Classroom, a local from nearby did a show of ‘goondaism’ as we were navigating the narrow path from the main road. He was impatient and simply assumed that he could bulldoze his way through at will. He began threatening too.
This is commonplace now. If there is an accident, or an offence committed or even a crime, the defaulter will first call his contacts in the police department and then also the local MLA or politician to bail him out. And this practice is seen in institutions, where children who have not fulfilled their responsibilities have been bailed out by pressure from parents who have compromised values and aided by institution heads or staff who too have been corrupted.
This emboldenment has to stop somewhere. And while we are faced with a future where we may think that with the same re-elected leaders or representatives, our voice remains unheard, the small spark that has been lit is our chance of hope. The few who are new faces, first timers, young, promising leaders, sons of the soil are the ones that will spark that change. The others who entered the political arena for the first time to contest the Legislative Assembly elections in Goa against old timers, are also bravehearts that we must salute. We must salute their courage, integrity and sincerity.
Now we do have our foot in the door. It will not be easy. But we will have to be watchful, constantly and consistently engage with them and lend support when they become our voice to protect Goa, to conserve Goa, to rewild Goa and to rebuild a sustainable Goa. We must prompt them into action. We must prompt them to lead, even if in the opposition, as changemakers that Goa needs.
(Tallulah D’Silva is an Architect and silver awardee of the Golden Door Award 2020 for truth and integrity.)
