Goan ‘innovators’: Topsy-turvy tale of greed
Goa is extremely rich in innovative minds who are responsible for Goa’s destruction, says DR JOE D’SOUSA
Dr Raghunath Mashelkar dreams of Goa being the happiest state in the world by 2035. Each and every individual has a right to dream and for Dr Mashelkar, who has realised his dreams positively, surely has the attitude of the “dangerous optimist”, as he himself feels and says so.
While elucidating his personal story of becoming a serious and a successful scientist through sheer hard work, Dr Mashelkar has extrapolated his vision to the Goa of his dreams and has deduced Goa to become the happiest state in the world by 2035. Goa requires missionaries who will make sacrifices, to save Goans from annihilation and destruction. Then, there are others like me, who may have worked equally hard under trying and challenging conditions and have not tasted success stories and fairy tale rise to stardom as Dr Mashelkar did. They realistically do not feel that Goa would become a happy state. Those who listed to Dr Mashelkar and have read this essay and would live till 2035, would see Goa lose most of its verdant hills to unscrupulous mining activities and lopsided tourism.
The dreaming and innovation mantra described by Dr Mashelkar is an age-old phenomena, nothing novel. From times immemorial, man has progressed from the Stone Age to the present information technology era. Now is the time for emergence of nanotechnology and radiation informatics, to deliver us into the 21st century by pursuing our exploration efforts for other earth like planets in our universe. All men successful in their own field, and with ways of their own, have had their own dream vision and were innovative.
Dr Mashelkar has used his creativity to generate patents, but his patents have not generated wealth and prosperity for India, as in the case of Dhirubhai Ambani. The latter with his innovative mind has done much for the Indian people. This essay is not to undermine or belittle Mashelkar’s contribution, but to challenge his “dangerous optimism”, without field study and experimentation needed of a research scientist. Being an active field worker, and a laboratory person well conversant with the socio-political and the economic development of Goa, I dare declare that by 2035, the ill-effects of unscientific mining will be there for all to see. Water shortages, water purification and harvesting for human use, would be a major challenge requiring efforts on redressal. The river beds and seas choked with plastic litter, mining dust and tar balls would make Goans unhappy and the need to extend activities to sustain fisheries through shrimp and fish prawns would be a challenge. Today, the prawn seed farm near Betul is a sick unit, and the closure of the loss making prawn farming nursery is driving the employees into strikes and agitations.
Dr Mashelkar, today, seems to be totally oblivious of the fact, that in Goa, we have several politicians who also have their own style of success stories. Innovative Luizinho Faleiro’s rags to riches story is available in print. Churchill Alemao often declares that from being a waiter/cook on a ship, he was Goa’s Chief Minister. Take the case of Ravi Naik, who once upon a time, served as a bar boy, but he not only controls a real estate empire, but is also in charge of educational institutes.
In golden Goa, we have smugglers, illegal mining magnates, real estate swindlers, money lenders, drug dealers, all holding positions of authority in the Goa government by using their innovative minds. Our police, bureaucrats and politicians are today, a success story of creativity, innovation and the ability to make the impossible possible. Dr Mashelkar do you realise that police inspector Gudlar, whose father is still a motor cycle pilot, whom I still hire to ferry me up the Altinho hill, used his innovative mind to make possible, the drugs seized in police store house to be recycled to drug new drug peddlers and consumers?
Dr Mashelkar, by sitting in New Delhi, it is not easy to draw a dream plan for Goa’s development via the innovation module. If innovations lead to development, we all would be like you Dr Mashelkar. However, Goa today, is extremely rich in innovative minds, which are responsible for Goa’s destruction. This is the sad reality. The temples and churches are robbed in Goa, by innovative individuals, capable of duping the police on duty. The police in Goa use their brains exploit the common man. The police performance in Goa is like the fence eating the crop; aimed at killing those whom they should protect.
What Goa truly needs is the development of value system to inculcate an all inclusive growth. Corruption today has adversely degenerated our society. What we require today is the realisation of holistic growth and sustainable development, as tools for quality life. Goa has been battered and shattered by innovative pollution.
In today’s Goa, right from a job of a sweeper to an office peon or a clerk, a police constable or an inspector, to be a teacher or a professor or even a scientist, you would have to make payments and use your innovative methods to succeed in the competitive world of bribe giving and taking. As a University professor, and being actively involved in social work, I have a duty to recommend youth for employment opportunities in industries, as well as in government. During the regime of Mrs Shashikala Kakodkar, many of my recommendations were successful, sans any form of gratification. But in the India of today, let alone a job, a mere license, a work contract, a transfer, a even a national award, is out of political consideration and ridden with sins of omission, commission and full of the flavour of scam.
I have, for about three years from now, stopped attending the annual lecture programmes of both Mashelkar and Kalam, as they are a regular repetition each year on. However, as columns of newspaper dailies faithfully print out the text of their messages, I do glance through and get myself reminded of their famous television serial “Mungerilal Ke Hassein Sapne”.
Both Kalam and Mashelkar, by their tall talk on innovation, have sent me into a dream world hoping that Goa would be the perfect and shining example of prosperity by 2035. But Goans must now realise that it is my humble prediction, as a result of sheer “unrecognised hard work”, through field studies laboratory experimentation and analysis, and sociological understanding of Goa, have been proved right. I have scientifically shown Goan hills destroyed by mining, over the last 25 years. It would also result in water shortages, pollution and destroy Goan agriculture and fisheries. Sustainable development will take a beating. I have experimentally proved that garbage and sewage over loads have destroyed our springs, polluted our ground water, choked our mangroves, suffocated our rivers, thus degrading the quality of life of Goans by ushering diseases like cancer, water borne diseases and respiratory illnesses.
I boldly assert by 2035, Goa would be the land where survival of the fittest, in terms of exploitation and corruption, would be at its peak and Goans, by and large, would be left high and dry by those whom they elect to represent. I would be lucky to be in the grave, and sadly, many skeletons would be tumbling and trembling to see Goa gone by then. The year 2035 will tell us whether the innovative mantra of Dr Mashelkar and Dr Kalam has really made Goa a shining state. Unless Goans usher self righteousness, sacrifice and spirituality, Goa and Goans would be doomed by then. Goa requires sacrificing missionary zeal and fervour. I don’t see it for the moment and as I am a realist, I do not see Goa’s future to be shining, as of now.
+++++++
How jail birds become free birds
By Adelmo Fernandes
Convicts and under-trials from all over India, probably have a feeling that the jails in Goa are the best in the country. It is because if they do not find it comfortable to be holed up in a cell, they can easily walk out, probably with a little help. The modus operandi resorted to by inmates may differ from one jailbird to another. Taking a clue from seniors, the juveniles have also started to escape from Apna Ghar at Merces. The numbers of convicts that have escaped from Goan jails only go to show that if given a choice, a most hardened criminal would prefer a transfer to one of the jails in Goa. Prison inmates do have only one thing in mind, viz., an escape. Why? Simply because they probably feel that a life behind bars cannot make them better humans. I am reminded of a poem by Oscar Wilde. “The vilest deeds like poison weeds, Blossom well in prison air: It is only what is good in man, That wastes and withers there.”
Just for the record, in the past seven months about eight jailbirds have escaped from Aguada jail and Sada sub-jail. Well, you cannot blame the cops on duty at these jails. The instinct among prisoners to taste freedom is very strong and the jailors kept the cops guessing and a bit confused. But then, it must be said that for many prisoners, a visit to the hospital could well turn out to be the most important leg of their road to freedom. Therefore, falling sick could be a blessing in disguise, as it could be the passport to freedom. Well, if they are in the pink of health, they can always feign sickness. It is understood that two criminals escaped from the Central jail at Aguada by spilling chilly powder into the eyes of the jail guards.
I never knew that the inmates are allowed to cook in the cell. If not, how did the criminals manage to get their hands on chilly powder? Now, don’t tell me that the food served to the inmates is so sweet, that they (the inmates) are left with no other option other than to store chilly powder. It will not be a surprise, if the next time some inmates throw pepper powder onto the jail guards and escape, while these guards sneeze non-stop. Well, well, it must be said that the jailbirds come out with innovative ideas to escape.
A well known service-provider uses the catch-phrase “An idea can change your life.” For the jail-inmates, an idea can mean freedom. Jailbirds can really be imaginative. From house breaking to committing thefts and making holes in the wall to escape from prison, these criminals have come a long way. Not long ago, three inmates escaped from the Sada sub-jail by making a hole in the wall of the toilet, and walking along the railway tracks to freedom. It was definitely not a rat-hole. One can only imagine how big a hole should be for a fully grown adult male to pass through. If a prisoner is travelling in a police vehicle on the way to the jail, the easiest mode of escape would be to jump out through the window and go pillion-riding on a waiting two-wheeler. And I always thought that these vehicles transporting criminals and under-trials have iron grills for their windows.
An escape from jail would not be possible, if not for a little help from ‘friends’. So why should anyone object if ‘friends’ go out for a treat of ice-cream in the middle of the night?
