01 Feb 2023  |   06:21am IST

Mhadei and Battle for our Sovereignty

Mhadei and Battle for our Sovereignty

Giving up Mhadei is giving up of our water sovereignty and more. We need water satyagraha to restore our water sovereignty and the people of Goa have already  embraced it. 

Squandering our water sovereignty amounts to squandering the sovereignty of Goa. The costs of the loss of water sovereignty are high for our ecology and all living brings existing on the water course of Mhadei. This is why our water sovereignty is a shared sovereignty. 

The challenge to save Mhadei, therefore, has become urgent and inevitable. There is no time to waste. We have to get our act quickly. We cannot be Goans of yesterday. Yesterday divides us. We have our differences that divide us. But we have to rise above them and become Goans of today and stand up for Mhadei together.

Indeed, we have the imperative to foster the bio-happiness, where humans as well as all living beings on the banks of Mhadei enjoy food and water security.  Mhadei is our mother and life giver and we cannot allow our mother die. Death of our mother will be our own death.

What we seem to be facing today, unfortunately, through an active corporation of our Government is our dispossession to support accumulation by a vested interest. The handing over our water sovereignty is not just limited to the Mhadei issue. It is also linked to the Sagar Mala project that seems to have handed our rivers to the corporates in the name of their nationalization. What is proposed as nationalization of rivers appears nothing more than their privatization and exclusion of Goans. Thus, Goans are alienated from their own rivers and water resources and these resources are converted into raw materials for corporates to amass wealth. This preying upon the natural resources of Goa and Goans has put Goa on the fast track of destruction.

Water is life. Water, therefore, is sovereign. Goans and Goa enjoy sovereign rights over their  water resources. Today these rights are clearly trampled upon under the cover of development. The negative consequences of nationalisation of rivers as well as casinofication of Mandovi will unfold as days come by. But what is happening to Mhadei and its consequences are already threatening Goans, as well as the flora and fauna and other living beings that flourish around it. Therefore, giving up its sovereignty equals to giving up the state sovereignty of Goa. This loss also involves the loss of sovereignty of our territory as well as loss of sovereignty of our people. Therefore, the river course as well as the water course of Mhadei cannot be allowed to be altered mechanically by any vested interest.  The diversion of the water course of Mhadei will certainly change its river course.  It will amount to grave violation of the sovereignty of nature as well as Goan people, taking away our self-determination.

The loss of Mahadei that we feel so deeply bursts the myth that we have a Government that is promoting the good or interest of Goa and Goans. The manner in which the state actors from Karnataka, Goa and the Centre are acting manifests that Goa and the interest of Goans is betrayed by the ruling Party which operates at all the three levels. Karnataka being set to undergo elections, the ruling party appears to have chosen to favour it because it has to offer more political capital than our tiny Goa. We cannot allow our very own Government to preside over the theft of our precious water as well as the consequent ecological loss and loss of livelihood of our people. The diversion of water of Mhadei up-stream will prove to be a great human and ecological disaster for both Goa as well as Karnataka. 

Every river has built its course through natural geo-engineering over centuries. Interfering with it and effecting changes against its natural water course will be detrimental to the environment. What has been built by nature over centuries cannot be destroyed through a technological hydromodification without its consequences to  its adjacent environment. Humanity has harnessed the power of water for irrigation and generation of electric power but artificial diversion of the water against its natural flow will not be possible without paying its costs. Why Goa has to pay for the greed or even the need of Karnataka? We Goans, therefore, have the call from mother Goa to save Mhadei from destruction. Come what may, we cannot allow the death of Mhadei. It is a question of our sovereignty and we cannot allow it to be sold for thirty silver pieces by the ‘Judases’ sitting in the Government. We cannot allow an enslaved Government to destroy our sovereignty.

The issue of Mhadei although complex boils down to our sovereignty. What is at play around it is a politics of sovereignty.  Our Government seems to be displaying fake and plastic sovereignty as it bends backwards to make way for the political ambitions of its own Party ruling from the centre and in the state of Karnataka. This actions of our Government seems to be clearly robbing Goans of their sovereignty as authors of their own destiny. Goan self-determination regarding their life as well as natural resources is supreme and cannot be allowed to be squandered to politically benefit any ruling dispensation. 

Therefore, the battle to save Mhadei becomes inevitable. But when the enemy is from within, it is becomes even more difficult. We Goans have to tread a careful line. We have to give the government its fair chance to defend Mhadei. But all cannot be kept in the hands of the rulers. Mhadei is too precious. The loss of water sovereignty is a true loss of our own sovereignty. We cannot entertain any more plastic sovereignties. We have to stand for mother Mhadei with full resolve and see that there is no theft of our right to self-determination.  

Michel Foucault notoriously said that in political thought and analysis, we are yet to cut off the head of the king.  Perhaps, the stage has not come to decapitate the leader who leads Goa.  But it is certainly time  to bring him as well as his colleagues in the ruling benches to responsibility and deliver justice to our mother Mhadei.  We cannot have anyone in the chair of responsibility exhibiting nothing but plastic sovereignty. 

If justice cannot be delivered to Mhadei, it’s time for an honourable exit for all our esteemed leaders.  No one should preside over the death of Mhadei.

(Fr Victor Ferrao is an independent researcher attached to St Francis Xavier Church, Borim, Ponda)


IDhar UDHAR

Idhar Udhar