The Special Status Debate
In December, the Lok Sabha unanimously passed a Bill granting special status to the Hyderabad-Karnatak region. The Constitution (118th Amendment) Bill, 2012 which introduced the new Article 371 J allows for a special development board and reservation in State government jobs and institutions for the six backward districts in Karnataka that border Andhra Pradesh ~ Gulbarga, Yadgir, Raichur, Koppal, Bidar and Bellary. Apart from these Karnataka regions, Telangana, Rayalaseema and Andhra in AP enjoy special status under 371 as do Maharashtra’s Marathwada and Vidarbha districts, Kutch and Saurashtra in Gujarat and the North Eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, Mizoram, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
The Karnataka case, which took some thirty years to ride out the political motions, is of some academic interest to Goa where the special status debate has been recently revived after Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s official endorsement of it. Parrikar, who raised the matter with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the National Development Council meet some weeks ago, has promised to follow it up with a resolution in this month’s budget session of the State Assembly to bring all the political parties on board and strengthen Goa’s case.
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Goa’s special status demand was not to be confused with the “special financial status” granted to some States in the country, Parrikar has argued. What we are looking at, is a provision that can put the brakes on the unconstrained sale of land in this small State that’s spiking real estate prices to scorching levels, putting it beyond the reach of the sons and daughters of the soil. The Chief Minister said Goans were becoming culturally alienated in their homeland with the dilution of ethnic identity. The government ~ somewhat late in the day ~ is also toying with the idea of a law that will disallow agricultural land to be sold or transferred.
While more stringent laws to arrest the sale and conversions of farmlands, and a clampdown on foreign buyers, mega projects and large-scale corporate acquisitions of properties in Goa might to some extent stem the rapid advance of voracious promoters, it is unlikely to present an answer to Goa’s growing insecurity over in-migration and its visible consequences on the State’s character. Without meaning to appear cynical, it needs to be pointed out that too much damage has already been inflicted ~ and to a large extent with the consent and collusion of the political class, that will now form part of every panel debate likely to precede a resolution on special status.
The occupancy tax ~ between Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh a year ~ that had been proposed by the previous government on holiday homes bought by non-Goans and left unoccupied has also been summarily dismissed by the Chief Minister as unworkable. The occupancy tax, devised by planning experts who were consulted on the Regional Plan 2021, was seen as an avenue to discourage idle property speculation by metroIndians who contribute nothing to the State’s economy. The current government said just monitoring the properties would be a headache.
But in this collective sense of insecurity over a culturally diverse Goa that is emerging faster than we’d like, we’re missing out the finer details of the political plot. Frankly, it’s not the moneyed, urban Indian, the expatriate Brit or the ruthless Russian that will outnumber the Goan, though they will out-buy them. The threat lies in the sprawling slums, the politically sponsored pockets of vote-banks that are allowed to squat on Comunidade land or government properties and even the government doles that encourage large scale migrations from next door. There are no laws to prevent builders from sourcing cheaper and cheaper labour from afar, or to ensure they provide them humane temporary housing and repatriate them to their homestate when the job is done.
Special status is not a magic wand that will zap and stall the surge of migration that’s overtaken Goa. It is also not an instrument to reverse the pace of development and ensure that Goa’s biodiversity will be preserved, as environment minister AlinaSaldanha recently argued at the seminar in Panjim. There are stringent environment laws for that, and those have been rarely enforced ~ as we have seen with the rapacious mining over the last few years. Debate is the basis of the democratic process. But informed debate is even better.
