SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2024
Team Herald
PANJIM: He was and still is the hero and the architect. And his heroism lay in believing that the impossible was possible and giving Goa a bottom-up people, centric regional plan.
After leading a first people-based exercise in giving Goa a just Regional Plan didn’t quite end perfectly, he at 92 has plunged right in to give it another shot. Sensing the unease in the recent amendments (now scrapped) proposed to the Land and Building Construction Act.
Former Chief Planner, Town and Country Planning Organisation, Government of India Edgar Ribeiro strongly advocated the need to update the Regional Plan 2021 and submitted his written objections to the amendments to Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations, 2022.
Ribeiro said that too many amendments lead to a lot of confusion on how land can be used and with what intensity. Describing the way forward, he said, “We have to update the Regional Plan at least till 2031, and Town and Country Planning (TCP) department officials rather than consultants should drive the plan since they are capable.
Instead of a top-down approach, he has called for taking stakeholders and gram panchayats into confidence. He suggested the incorporation of local area plans which will emerge from the wards of the village panchayats and the municipalities.
Ribeiro said, “The most important thing is we have to continue action at two levels -- one updating Regional Plan because it is static and not go beyond 2021. It needs a proper frame and the time has come to extend the frame and citizens have proposed that the frame should be up to 2031. But my view is that frame is the accepted norm of the government. We already had RP 1981, 2001, and 2021. So the government has to pass an order that RP stands extended.”’
The second action is to write the Plan, he said, adding that the consultants should not be involved in this exercise because they are project driven. The TCP officials should do the plan because they are competent and I have seen them at the time of drafting RP 2021 as they were part of it. The TCP officials can do the plan because data is available and base maps are perfect.
According to Ribeiro, what is missing is the local area plans. The municipal and village panchayat wards have to be identified and prepare the plan. It can be updated every five years and as and when required, he added.
Stating that the preparation of a new plan has been stopped at the second level, Ribeiro said, “In Goa lot of powers which are to be moved at the ground level are taken over by MLAs. So they are sharing power and rather doing by getting people elected at the third level within their ambit rather than working in parallel with them.”
Ribeiro’s message is that “Development has to be through a system of sustainable for sustainability. This is just not rhetoric because I am talking from experience. I was personally involved in such four to five exercises in the country before returning to Goa”.
