Money, money, money…
It’s a rich man’s world! That was a popular Abba tune from the 1970s/80s and Goans old enough to remember it have started humming it again as the EDC last week implemented a parking fee for vehicles in the newly spruced up Patto Plaza in Panjim. Regulars were in for a rude shock when agents began charging a fee for two and four wheeled vehicles parked within the entire complex. The fee ranges from Rs 2 to Rs 15 and can extend to Rs 20 per day. Every staffer arriving in a car will henceforth shell out Rs 480 a month as parking fee. The complex boasts of offices ranging from banks and insurance companies to courier services, which means that people visiting the premises, either to pay an insurance premium or deliver a parcel to a courier agency or even submit Income-Tax returns will have to shell out a parking fee every time their vehicle is parked in the complex.
This is not to say that the upgrade of Patto Plaza has not given a much-needed upbeat look to the area, a refreshing change from the times when roads were bumpy, had open drains running along them, and were pedestrian unfriendly. There have been instances of even employees working in the offices within the complex suffering injuries as a result of flooded pits during monsoons. Now that the roads have been rebuilt, hopefully one set of woes of those visiting the complex will end.
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Charging a parking fee is now being emulated by those in the private sector too and it is popular not just from a revenue generation standpoint but also the environmental one. Perhaps taking a cue from the Corporation of the City of Panaji, the EDC has now decided to augment its income by taxing citizens using their vehicles and there is nothing wrong, in principle, with this move. Unfortunately, both these government bodies are guilty of abysmal failure in planning for the city’s growth and providing adequate urban infrastructure which, like it or not, includes more designated parking zones and a parking fee structure that is graded from the city center outwards in descending order of tariff. If the upgrade of Patto Plaza justifies the parking fee now being charged, by an extension of that logic the other spots in Panjim earmarked for pay parking where the provision of amenities is not up to the Patto Plaza mark should be made free parking areas till the authorities, whether public or private, get their act together.
But we know better. Citizens in this country are always the easiest touch, so what if ensuring adequate parking when plotting the city’s long-term growth was ignored by those who were supposed to keep an eye on the ball! The CCP in particular has been guilty of turning a blind eye to the menace of crazy parking on city roads, even recently granting parking permission to hotels along already congested roads, which further congest the thoroughfares branching off the main arterial roads(s). Following public outcry over inadequate parking facilities, the traffic police have reportedly suspended lifting and carting away two-wheelers parked in a wayward fashion, yet another knee-jerk reaction to a growing urban problem. Had Panjim’s, indeed Goa’s, public transport infrastructure been efficient ~ or should we say even existent in a meaningful way ~ at least half the congestion issues we are dealing with today could have been averted.
But there is another angle to the toll taken by the parking toll, as it were ~ the parking fee has emerged as a feeder line for some people in authority, with parking scams surfacing even within the CCP in the past. Commercialization, therefore is the key, where every sphere of our life is guided by the aim of the authorities to rake in the money through a tax or charge of one form or another instead of coming up with innovative revenue-generation ideas. The banking sector which earlier catered to citizens by extending loans for family functions, micro-financing and small scale industries now runs almost entirely on profit-oriented policies. Commercialization has galloped into the medical sector too. Paradoxically, we cannot fault the government, the banking/medical or various other lobbies out there ever ready to take money off citizens. For, as a society, we have become increasingly transactional wherein even so-called friends expect to be paid for favours, even if the favour was only a referral was to a mason or plumber! The payment, of course, is done discreetly by wage earner to the referrer as a “finder’s fee”. This malaise is deeply entrenched among land brokers where bosom pals have turned arch enemies over disputes in payment of “commissions” and “brokerage”. This, then, is the Goan reality ~ that money makes the world go round!
