FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2024
The government got a glimpse of people’s power on October 19 when a couple of hundred citizens gathered at the Mormugao deputy collector’s office to protest the personal hearing on the land acquisition process for the doubling of the South Western Railway line. In the midst of the pandemic, when social distancing is one of the norms to be followed to keep safe, the hearing which is part of the land acquisition process was scheduled. Ironically, the hearing was to be held after some of the groups objecting to the doubling of the track had met with the Chief Minister and had served an ultimatum of a month to the government to scrap the project. At the same meeting, the Chief Minister had asked the group to wait and an assurance had been given to have another round of meetings.
In the light of this meeting with the CM, activists had argued that the personal hearing called by the deputy collector should have been called off. This demand was not acceeded to, and what occurred in Vasco, where the deputy collector sought 15 minutes from the gathering to discuss the situation with his seniors, only to disappear from the scene, and return much later to state that the process has been deferred is a strong indication that the government is seeking to delay the process, perhaps hoping that the opposition to it will dwindle. That, however, is unlikely to happen as for many who will be affected by the projects, will have their houses – ancestral homes in some cases – that will fall to the onslaught of the bulldozers, and they are not prepared to allow that to happen.
The past few years have seen many protests over the land acquisition for the doubling of the track. They were sporadic in the earlier months, but there now is a more effective disapproval on display. The groups fighting the doubling of the track, and in effect saying no to transportation of coal through Goa, have been going to the villages, interacting with the people and creating an awareness of what the project entails. That is important, and it is this that is possibly now paying dividends to the movement, as more people have realised just why this project could be detrimental to the State and the people.
The protest outside the Mormugao deputy collector’s office makes it increasingly clear that the people will not give up the fight easily. Yet, very little has actually been gained so far by the protests over the doubling of the railway track. Right now, the process of personal hearings on the land acquisition has only been deferred. The project has not been scrapped, and that is the demand of the people, which they are not willing to give up. However, the government may just have displayed that it has been pushed back by the people, by defering the hearing that was to take place.
This is the beginning. There remains a lot to be done if this project and the other two – highway expansion and power cable laying in the Mollem forest – are to be scrapped. The opposition to the three projects has been growing and there will come a point in time when the government will have to listen to what the people are saying. This is not the last of the protests on the railway double tracking that Goa has seen. Clearly, after the manner in which the hearing on October 19 was held, the government will have learnt that it has to respond to the people’s concerns. It could have been avoidable had the hearing been cancelled. It was not and the people got their chance to diplay their strength, and an impetus to keep the fight going.
