SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2024
By Vivek Menezes
Adding insult to injury in the ongoing massacre of green cover across the State, the giant old banyan tree uprooted at midnight from St. Inez for an alleged “Smart Road project” has been conspicuously relocated to the new football garounds being prepared at Campal, where the renowned horticulturist and landscape designer Daniel D’Souza has volunteered to try and keep it alive. It’s a gallant effort – and the responsible officials and heartfelt “tree doctor” deserve credit for trying – but the entire exercise does seem like mere window dressing, to distract from the veritable holocaust of trees that is being carried out on every other scrap of land in Goa that can be converted, concretized and sold off in one of the most unscrupulous real estate marketplaces in the world.
In this election year, with heavy campaigning from both “national parties” in the State, with their interchangeable – and indeed constantly interchanging – cast of usual suspects who have together conspired to wreck Goa, there is a glaring disconnect from the grandiose rhetoric about billions spent on “development works” and the disgracefully incompetent misgovernance characterizing everyday reality in India’s smallest state. Instead of accountability, there is only defiance and bullying. Even the high court’s well-meaning interventions are being stalled or sabotaged. This level of impunity and arrogance is unprecedented in Indian democracy, as though challenging voters to dare acknowledge the open assault on their rights and quality of life. In the famous Hans Christian Andersen folktale, an innocent child exposed the emperor’s literally “naked” corruption. What will lift our contemporary silences?
Earlier this week, Claude Alvares wrote with great clarity on social media that “for the past ten years now, Goa has been almost in a permanent state of war. There have been regular invading armies and conquests, mostly originating out of Delhi, or Mumbai, or even Haryana and other places, each biting off slices of Goan villages, and the Goa government has in every conceivable case, gone all out to support them. The political leaders who run this government only come to the villagers when they want their votes.” He said to “look at these simple facts about the new brewery and distillery approved for erection at Amdai, on the banks of the Uguem river - a depressing repeat of hundreds of similar invasions being fought at Cavelossim, Carmona, Tiracol”
Alvares says “the land is zoned as orchard in the regional plan, because it has magnificent spread of coconut and cashew trees. The new owners claim in a media interview that the Tree Act being amended to exclude coconut trees, they do not need permission to mass-kill the trees on the plots [and] according to the project report, there is “plentiful water” to produce 5 lakh hectolitres of beer. There is simply no acknowledgement that the water belongs to - and has been hitherto sustainably enjoyed by - the people living in the area. The water, in fact, belongs to them since they have been using it for decades.” Nonetheless, slews of clearances were promptly issued: “When ordinary Goans approach the same bodies for similar permissions or approvals, they are made to run around coconut trees. Now even that may not be possible, because at Amdai, more than 1,000 coconut trees will be cut to produce liquor and beer for tourists and other elements, as if they haven't already drunk themselves senseless.”
What kind of “development” is this? How can any responsible government keep on subverting the laws to transform the forests and orchards of the state into concrete jungles, in clear contravention of Supreme Court guidelines that trees can only be felled “as a last resort”. In 2020, Chief Justice Bobde insisted even “the value of the oxygen that a tree gives in its lifetime must be factored in.” The next year, the special committee he appointed said “the monetary value of a project, for which hundreds of trees are felled, is sometimes far less than the economic and environmental worth of the felled trees.” Heritage trees with a lifespan of more than 100 years – of which countless numbers are being cut in Goa – should each be valued as more than one crore, because each is worth around 75,000 rupees for every year of its existence: “the first endeavour should be to relocate them, making use of modern technology, and if they must be felled; five saplings in lieu of one tree is not good enough since a 100-year-old tree cannot be equated with a few fresh saplings”
“I miss the trees that we have lost in Panjim so much,” says Daniel D’Souza, the passionate plant man who is focused on reviving the cruelly hacked St. Inez banyan in its new location. “The trees and I grew up together, and it hurts me a lot when they suffer. What is happening now is the result of constant asphalting, and the destruction of the city’s old drainage systems. The roots are becoming submerged. All these people with high qualifications have made a mess of the city, and it is the trees which are suffering the most.”
Back in 2021, in the aftermath of Cyclone Tauktae, D’Souza managed to save an uprooted copperpod tree on 18th June Road, but last year, after another storm, and despite his heartfelt entreaties, the city authorities callously cut apart and disposed of a fallen rain tree, and nearby tamarind. This time, given yet another opportunity, the 53-year-old cancer survivor says he will try to ensure the St. Inez banyan continues to live: “I have chlorophyll in my veins, and I am doing it for Mother Nature. It’s not just about us. What about the birds? Don’t they have rights? Where are they going to rest? And what about the butterflies and moths? Are we not responsible for them? How about the bats – there are thousands roosting in each old tree like this – are we not accountable to them? Did we learn nothing from the pandemic, when we had money, but no food to eat? There is still hope for this tree, and I will do everything possible to save it.”
(Vivek Menezes is a writer and co-founder of the Goa Arts and Literature Festival)
