SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
Savio Pinto
Governing a State is not a child’s play, maybe a simple logical term to say. And especially in the commotion of ‘locked down’ temperature where there is bound to have many hits and misses as we just experienced in Goa and all over India as well.
Governing needs first and foremost a good IQ and broad spectrum of understanding the society at large and not just imposing or unleashing your ill-conceived mantras. Goa being a smaller State compared to most of our other Indian States, we could have had a better emergency management skill prevailing at any given time. Failing to do so is nothing but lethargy. Emergency, be it during any natural calamity or like the present COVID-19 war like situation, we should have had a better equipped and well management display at source to mitigate any sufferings of the people that would be detrimental in their survival for the necessary period of time. What sense would it make if one possesses wealth of lakhs of rupees if there is nothing to buy at the shops? How could the grocery owners have stockpiled their stores if the supply has been curtailed? How one could move to the nearest stores to find out the requirements of their family? How anyone would stock the provisions all of a sudden to last 21 or 30 days? How would someone just explain the basic requirements of the locked-out period? Who and how one can experience the hunger of any street boy who never thinks about his tomorrow? These are just a few questions that may crop up when all of a sudden, your life turns topsy-turvy.
Now after going through these exercises can the government sit and relax thinking they have done a wonderful job in controlling his people from the chaos? No, and never ever they have displayed such enthusiasm.They lacked vision to gauge how people actually live life.
The present fight against COVID-19 will be a long drawn battle as even after the end of the pandemic people will be wary of the disease, and rightly so! And the government should at least learn from its faulty policies and open up their minds to greater intelligentsia henceforth and give its people what they deserve the best during such crisis.
Humanity should always be on their priority list of any government. It must be the village panchayats that should have had extraordinary powers to implement the government policy.
The vast sum of money that may have been sanctioned to help the neediest is another vast area to be handled exclusively and with utmost care. Most of the times these funds only reach to those who are influential at the ministerial or MLAs’ level and in the bargain miss out those who actually need. The recent stunts by some of the politicians distributing rations in their constituencies by themselves shows how hollow our system is. It would have been much better for them if they could lend a helping hand to their respective village panchayat to do the needful as they know the people much better than the MLAs or the ministers. People won’t mind to extending the locked down period for even another month provided the system and mechanism plays its role to its desired results. We need to know that hunger is the biggest enemy of mankind.
As things may fall in place now for better tomorrow, there will be a list of claimants for their loss. The tempting package that may be unveiled soon may include either in cash or through cheques to those who suffered during the period and that will surely witness a serpentine queue from the Secretariat to the house of the Minister or the local MLA. I feel at most of the times that the good leaders are always born whereas others are just crafted.
And this is how it works for Goa. After all it’s all happening in India.
