MONDAY, MAY 06, 2024
Goa is upset – with three projects all in a bunch related to the essential Sagarmala Logistic Project: a) the South Western Railway Track-doubling project, Vasco to Hospet, (Karnataka) at a cost of around Rs 2100 crores; b) 4-Laning of the National Highway 4A Old Goa to Belagavi, (Karnataka), cost of around Rs 1400 crores and c) the Raigarh, (Chhattisgarh) to Goa, the Tamnar 400 KV Transmission Line Project, cost of around Rs 260 crores (for Goa portions). So, fortunately for Goa, there are Rs 3760 crores of investments on the plate – but the unfortunate part is, nobody seems to be happy and certainly not without reasons!
According to the numbers available in public domain, the projects go to fragment and deforest over 170 hectares of cover at the Mollem National park and the Bhagwan Mahaveer Wild Life Sanctuary, the lungs and the bio-diversity of the State and of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Western Ghats.
Rabindranath Tagore on his visit to Japan in the early 20th Century came across Japanese “Fire-flies”..two-liner truths nice to remember..and he scribbled and handed over to his host the couplet..“Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven”!
How I hope, somebody in Lutyens’ listens to us, earthly-mortals’ endless efforts!
The project is excellent in its conception, but if I see from the prism of the “4 P”s, the question is, does it suit the “P”lace? I thought I’ll take a close look at benefits vis-à-vis the impacts.
My take: But before I come to our benefits and impacts – it’s important to recapitulate at this point, where we are on our Finances. Even before the onset of the pandemic, we were passing thru very bad times, tourism was shrinking, borrowings were up, wage bills of the State were climbing. With all this at the background, let’s examine the 1st Project – the Track Doubling Project from Vasco to Castle Rock. Just trying to figure out, what values we add to the State or to the Country. Yes, the plans reportedly are that we expand our coal operations at Goa from the current 16 million tons a year to a whopping 51 million tons in 2035 and we transport the additional coal right thru the backyards of residential homes (as the track runs). I heard a few voices saying that “if we do not transport coal for Karnataka, why should they give us electricity? For general information here, the electricity we buy comes from the grid thru our JERC-allocations – none of the generators are at Karnataka. Also, the coal we are talking of is largely Coking Coal for the mega steel plants and their expansion program at Bhadrawati and Hospet in Karnataka. The State Government of course affirms we will not increase coal handling, we will contrarily, reduce by 50% and soon to nil..again true to our salts, no time-limits are set – a Union Minister was to arrive and solve all issues last month, so learning from multifarious experience from Mining to Mahadayi, Casinos to Taxi-Meters from “Mobility Plans” to 4-Laning of the Varunapuri stretch, levels of trust at ground-zero face severe crisis!
Alternatives – yes, why not import at Karwar or Mangalore – it would come at half the cost in any case?
How many people from Goa get jobs – negligible I think, going by the current experience from the NH 17 project. But just imagine the coal-dust pollution from the 3-fold increase in storage, handling and transportation of coal (and railways rarely give closed wagons for coal). The Air Quality Index (AQI) levels per State’s last public data, AQIs stood well over 200 at Mormugao (in several occasions even more than 350..in the “Very Poor” and “Severe” grades – I strongly feel we should not mess up our lungs further.
b) The 4-Laning of the NH4A: In any case when we drive to Pune, we would take the Amboli Road – it’s much shorter and better. Why mess up the forests? Again, it’s the Coal trucks that have to move to Hospet and Bellary
c) The 400KV line: I don’t understand how we become “self-sufficient in power” by this transmission line – the stated objective is that it will act as load evacuation from the private-sector Tamnar Power Project at Chhattisgarh. In any case we buy from the grid both ways! I would look for development of renewable energy sources where we pitifully, draw a near-naught! Why does the State Government not publish a simple statement of Costs vs Impacts? What CUMULATIVE IMPACT ASSESSMENT was done for the three projects together? If we must erect only “6 pylons” why must we lose 14000 trees of which 1000 are in the wild-life sanctuary itself.
My Prescriptions: In my view, we should put the Rs 3700 crores in tourism. Not the tourism we do today – I’m talking of Tourism in the Spain and Portugal type. Spain had 83 million tourists 2019, Portugal had 23 million, India had just 11 million and Goa less than a million. So that’s the growth potential! I have data for 2017 (TTT), Japan gets 2400, cruise vessel port calls a year, South Korea gets 747, Indonesia 287 and ours (all ports together) just 128! Convert Mormugao to India’s passenger-and-cruise terminal and container terminal for Western India. Avoid Bulk totally – that’s the way forward, in my view!
And in conclusion: In the Paris Climate-Change – we agreed we emphasise green activity. As a state we come 7th in Sustainability Goals Index, we come 22nd in “Clean Water and Sanitation” and we are 19th in “Climate Actions”. Tagore’s words were prophetic more than a century back – let’s not lose our trees – then there’ll be Nobody Up There to listen to us tomorrow!
(Binayak Datta is a
Finance Professional)
